Roseanne is back! The first episode of the reboot premieres tonight on ABC.
Aside from our general curiosity about about the series’ second act, we’re excited to see real-life Jewish mom Sara Gilbert reprise her role as Darlene Conner — who has seen quite a lot of changes.
In the reboot, Darlene has returned to the Conner home, divorced and out of work. The family as a whole seems to be as tumultuous as ever: Roseanne and Dan are Trump supporters, and the family is generally in bad financial straits. Then there’s Darlene’s son, Mark, who is interested in fashion and nails and seems to be exploring a nonbinary identity in a conservative household.
This all has trappings of an extremely interesting TV experience — which means we’ll definitely be watching.
But what has Gilbert, 43, been up to since Roseanne went off the air in 1997? Well, she’s the creator and a host on The Talk, a CBS daytime show that focuses on parenthood.
The mom of three has also had roles on shows like 24, ER, Twins, and The Big Bang Theory, where she reunited with Johnny Galecki, her co-star on Roseanne. She married musician Linda Perry in 2014. In 2010, Gilbert came out, saying how she felt comfortable talking about her sexuality on The Talk:
This is a talk show, so obviously I’m going to be discussing my life more, and I felt that the first place I wanted to do it wasn’t in a CBS press release. It just seemed impersonal, and I felt like I’d rather come in person and talk to you about all that stuff here.
Ironically, Gilbert realized she was gay while dating Galecki IRL, saying, “he would come over and we would, like, make out, and then I would start to get depressed.” She later came out to him and says he was very “sweet” and supportive — the two are still very close to this day.
How does she feel about being back on Roseanne, especially with the conservative aspects of it? She told Variety recently that she wanted to do a show that felt real:
I really wanted the house to feel a lot like it did before. I felt like there would be little changes in artwork and things like that, but this is a working-class family. I think sometimes people in Hollywood do working class through the lens of people who are privileged.
It was very important to me that they were still struggling. We did a lot of research, and it showed that people who were in their income bracket then were actually often making less now, not even factoring in inflation.
Seems like the reboot is going to be all sorts of interesting, to say the least. Check out the trailer below —and tune in later tonight:
