‘The Conners’ Producer Explains Why 1 ‘Roseanne’ Character Was ‘Tarnished’ in Final Seasons
When The Conners ended its seven-season run, a longtime character was noticeably missing—and no, we’re not talking about family matriarch Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) or her son D.J. (Michael Fishman), who both had perfectly good excuses for not being there. (Rosie was dead, and D.J. was overseas with the military, after all.)
David Healy, the character played by Johnny Galecki in the original Roseanne series, also didn't return for the series finale. Instead, his once beloved character left behind a bummer of a legacy as a deadbeat dad.
In an interview with Deadline, The Conners executive producer Dave Caplan explained, “Because we didn’t have him so much, we had to make him a terrible father.”
Showrunner Bruce Helford further explained that Galecki, who appeared in a few episodes of The Conners spinoff in its first two seasons, “really did not want to keep doing it.”
“He was always invited, and we’re all very close with him,” Helford said. “We were kind of in a position where, how do you explain this guy without killing him? This guy isn’t around. So unfortunately, his character got tarnished in that way.”
In 2023, Helford explained that there was no choice but to explain Galecki’s character’s absence from the lives of his kids, Harris (Emma Kenney) and Mark (Ames McNamara), without making him a bad father. The deadbeat dad reveal was made at the end of Season 5, after Galecki had been missing from the show for several years.
“Johnny is just too busy,” Helford told TVLine at the time. “We love him, and he would love to be doing stuff with us, but it just hasn’t worked out scheduling-wise.”
Helford admitted that producers protected Galecki’s character for as long as they could. “For the longest time, we didn’t want to say anything negative [about the character] because you never know if Johnny’s going to want to come back, and we didn’t want to have to repair a relationship,” he added. “We tried to keep him from being a completely negligent father, and then it became a matter of having other characters [to service].”
Galecki played Darlene Conner’s (Sara Gilbert) boyfriend-turned-husband David Healy from 1992 to 1997 on Roseanne. He appeared in one episode of the show’s 2018 revival and then four episodes of The Conners before his character disappeared for good.
Galecki’s last onscreen acting role was in The Conners Season 2 episode “Lanford, Lanford,” which aired a few months after The Big Bang Theory finale in 2019.
Related: Roseanne Barr Had Surprise Reaction to ‘The Conners’ Finale