Roseanne revived! Inside the heady return of the sitcom classic

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Roseanne Barr is not happy that someone swiped her Elvis plates.

But other than the aforementioned dishes featuring the King, just about everything inside the Conner home has been painstakingly replicated for the return of Roseanne, ABC’s much-anticipated reboot of the groundbreaking sitcom about a blue-collar family in Illinois.

There are even pickled eggs in the pantry.

“It was like we wrapped last week instead of 20 years ago,” says John Goodman, who will reprise his role as Roseanne’s very much alive husband, Dan, who was notoriously killed off in the sitcom’s 1997 finale. “The hair on my arms stands up. It’s like if I was going to put my Boy Scouts uniform on again and it still fit.”

Watch the full Entertainment Weekly Cast Reunions: Roseanne episode on People TV

That’s certainly what the writers are going for in the nine episodes that will begin airing on March 27. Almost everyone from the comedy’s original run is returning for the reboot, including Laurie Metcalf (Roseanne’s sister Jackie), Sara Gilbert (Darlene Conner), Lecy Goranson (Becky Conner), Sarah Chalke (who replaced Goranson as Becky in 1993), and Michael Fishman (D.J. Conner). Even Johnny Galecki, who played Darlene’s boyfriend-turned-husband, will return for one episode.

“We want everybody to see something that doesn’t really exist on TV anymore, which is an honest family,” says executive producer Bruce Helford, who is running the star-studded writers room that includes Whitney Cummings, Wanda Sykes, Norm McDonald, and Barr herself. “There’s not much of that. Everything is higher-toned or more niche. These people are very much in the core of what’s going on in the country right now.”

In this week’s issue, we talked to the entire cast about reprising their beloved roles and whether the Conners are as relevant today as they were from 1988 to 1997 when the comedy first aired on ABC. Gilbert explains how she first got the idea of a reunion, while Barr opens up about returning to TV and whether her reputation as a head-strong, if not downright bullheaded, actor-producer has improved over time.

“I don’t want to fight no more,” Barr tells EW. “I don’t have nothing to prove.”