The Conners stars recall learning about Roseanne Barr's racist tweet, say filming without her is "awkward but not awkward"

People

People magazine conducted a joint interview with Sara Gilbert, John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf to discuss Barr's racist tweet and filming The Conners without her. “It was awkward but not awkward,” says Metcalf. “It was right but not right, wrong but not wrong.” Goodman recalls first hearing about Barr's racist tweet “in my kitchen and maybe my daughter or my wife told me. It just didn’t seem true. Then it got true. I was consciously trying to accept it.” Metcalf says upon learning about the tweet, she was just trying “to reconcile myself to the show being gone,” adding: “And you know, coming off such a high, it was hard to wrap our heads around.” As for the spinoff, Metcalf says: "There was a lot of risk involved. But we all decided as a group to take the risk, knowing that we could be judged by deciding to come back.” Goodman agrees: “There was a debt owed to this fictional family. We want to finish telling this story.”