The Conners star John Goodman also starred in Roseanne as family patriarch Dan Conner. But that doesn’t mean he always agreed with the way things went on the show.
Just about everyone today knows who John Goodman is. Some of us watched him rise to national fame thanks to his role on Roseanne. Goodman played Dan Conner on the ABC comedy series from 1988 until 1997 and even received a Golden Globe Award for his performance. Meanwhile, there are plenty of others out there who are seeing Goodman for the first time in his role in the Rosanne sequel, The Conners. He’s been starring in that show since 2018.
However, despite all of the success that John Goodman had on Roseanne, he recently told Vanity Fair that he fought against the show’s sitcom formula.
“It was stylistically different being on a sitcom,” Goodman explained.
“It’s formulaic. I tried to fight against that as much as I could. And within the style, just figure out kind of different ways to do things. Things that would interest me. Because, you know, it was a little repetitious but there was a time when I was trying to see how big I could do things and still ground them in reality.”
‘The Conners’ Star Used His Time on ‘Roseanne’ as a Learning Experience
As John Goodman told Vanity Fair in his recent interview, he wanted to do things a little differently than the standard sitcom. But that, of course, wasn’t always possible. He took the good with the bad and learned as he went.
“Like everything else I’d done up until then I used it as a learning experience,” The Conners star told the outlet.
It’s not like Goodman just showed up to the set of Roseanne one day, either. He worked his way up the acting ranks before finally landing on the ABC series. It seems like that skill of adapting and learning on the go has never left the 69-year-old.
After his time came and went on Roseanne, Goodman starred in films like Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, The Flinstones, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Inside Llewyn Davis. He also had regular TV roles in shows like Damages, Alpha House, The Righteous Gemstones, The West Wing, and Community.
In addition to those roles, he also had numerous voice-acting gigs. Some of those you might recognize as well. He voiced Pacha in The Emperor’s New Groove franchise, James P. “Sulley” Sullivan in Disney Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. franchise, Baloo in The Jungle Book, and many more.
Yeah, it’s pretty safe to say that John Goodman has capitalized on his prior learning experiences in shows like Roseanne. He even joked during his latest interview as if he is still perfecting his craft.
“One of these days I’ll get it right.”
