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‘The Conners’ Renewed for Season 2 on ABC
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The network’s highest-rated new series will return in 2019-20.
ABC is returning to Lanford in 2019-20.
The network has renewed The Conners for a second season after the comedy turned in solid ratings for its first run. The Roseannespinoff is among the top five new series of 2018-19 in both adults 18-49 and total viewers.
Season one of The Conners ran for 11 episodes, and sources tells The Hollywood Reporter season two will be a similar length as several castmembers also have other commitments.
Stars Sara Gilbert (who’s also an executive producer), John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, Lecy Goranson and Ames McNamara are all set to return. ABC says additional cast will be announced later, but the renewal announcement does not mention Roseanne alum Michael Fishman or newer castmembers Emma Kenney, Maya Lynne Robinson and Jayden Rey.
“We are proud to be continuing the story of the iconic Conner family,” said ABC Entertainment president Karey Burke. “This team is fearless in their willingness to tackle contemporary issues with humor and heart, and I have no doubt they will continue to outdo themselves.”
The pickup does not come as a big surprise, given the show’s ratings and the fact that in January, Burke said the network was close to a renewal deal.
‘The Conners’ Closes In on Season 2 Renewal at ABC
The series came out of the cancellation of Roseanne, whose revival had huge ratings in the spring of 2018 but ended after star Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet about former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett. After executive producer Tom Werner struck a deal with Barr to step away from any creative or financial interest in a spinoff, ABC gave a straight-to-series order to The Conners in June.
The show came up well short of its predecessor’s ratings but still put up a 2.2 rating among adults 18-49 and 9.5 million viewers (including a week of delayed viewing). That makes The Conners the No. 1 new comedy of 2018-19; it ranks in the top 20 among all broadcast shows for the season in the 18-49 demographic (excluding sports) and the top 30 in total viewers.
Gilbert executive produces along with Bruce Helford, Dave Caplan, Bruce Rasmussen and Tony Hernandez.
The Conners joins the final season of Modern Family, A Million Little Things, The Good Doctor and Agents of SHIELDin ABC’s lineup for 2019-20.
Roseanne Barr Says Sara Gilbert “Destroyed” Her Life and RoseanneAs the fired actress mulls whether she should sue ABC, Roseanne and The Conners executive producer Tom Werner, or everyone involved in the revival, she saved her harshest words for her former co-star, who she says “will never get enough until she consumes my liver with a fine Chianti.”by
MARCH 22, 2019 10:10 AM
Nearly a year after she was fired from ABC and the Roseanne revival for her racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, it appears Roseanne Barrhas found a new person to blame for her professional downfall: Sara Gilbert, who she said “destroyed the show and my life” with one tweet.
Gilbert returned to play Darlene Conner in the revival and also served as an executive producer. Speaking with The Washington Post, Barr said she can’t forgive Gilbert for tweeting that her comment regarding Jarrett was “abhorrent.”
“She will never get enough until she consumes my liver with a fine Chianti,” Barr said. Gilbert, meanwhile, told the Post that her conversations with Barr ahead of the revival had reassured her that the project was a good idea, despite Barr’s troll-like online presence. “I knew that Roseanne, the person, was unpredictable at times, but she told me this was her redemption,” Gilbert said. “I chose to believe her.” (A representative for Gilbert did not immediately respond to V.F.’s request for comment regarding Barr’s digs.)
In the same interview, Barr also railed against the deal she signed that allowed The Conners, which just got renewed for a second season, to air without her participation—creative or financial. Barr said Tom Werner, who executive produced Roseanneand now serves as an E.P. for The Conners, told her the deal would make her look like a hero—and that he personally would publicly state that she was not racist. That promise was never honored, she said, and all hope she might have had of appearing on the new series was dashed when her character was killed via an opioid overdose in the new show’s premiere. Now, the Post reports, Barr is considering whether she should sue Werner, ABC, or everyone involved in the debacle.
Either way, it appears Barr has found plenty of outlets for her anger over the way the series—and her involvement in it—ended. Earlier this week, video surfaced of a comedy appearance in Las Vegas in which Barr copied a classic Donald Trumptactic: insulting the network that spurned her. “Dear ABC,” she said during the appearance, reading from a script. “When you asked me back to once again bail out your shit, fuckin’ low-rated network, I did so with the same vigor I’ve always rocked, and I delivered you the highest ratings that you had in 10 fucking years. At the first sign of controversy, you killed me off with a drug overdose. But you know what? I ain’t dead, bitches.”
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