The Conners producers weigh in on the possibility of Johnny Galecki and Michael Fishman reprising their original roles again. They originated characters on Roseanne, the sitcom which the new show directly follows, with Fishman playing eldest son D.J. Conner from episode 2 of Roseanne through season 4 of the sequel and Galecki playing David Healy, with whom D.J.’s older sister Darlene (Sara Gilbert) has a tumultuous relationship, across 98 episodes beginning in Roseanne season 4. The Conners season 7 will be the final season of the show, and neither star has so far been confirmed to appear.
TVLine shared an interview with co-creators Bruce Helford and Dave Caplan after the Conners season 6 finale. When asked if there would be a chance for either Galecki or Fishman to return in the final season, Helford said that “the door is always open.” They said they will probably reach out to Galecki, especially considering his friendship with Gilbert. Caplan also admitted that “we’ve never stopped feeling the pressure of the legacy,” so using more legacy characters could eventually be on their agenda despite them not focusing on guest stars at this stage of development. Read their full quotes below:
Helford: The door is always open to Johnny. I’m sure we’ll be talking to him. Caplan: He and Sara [Gilbert] are close, and these [final] six [episodes] will be all about completion, so it would be great to have the David character because he has been so absent from his kids’ lives. It’s questionable whether Darlene has any unfinished business with David, but the kids certainly do. That’s really a matter of whether Johnny wants to do something or not…. We’re open to doing something. Helford: [As for Fishman’s return,] anything is possible. We’re more focused on story than guest stars at the moment, but there are a lot of people that we want to see again for completion, so every and any door is open.
Caplan: The whole time that we’ve been doing The Conners, we’ve never stopped feeling the pressure of the legacy of the entire run. We owe it to these characters because they’re the same characters. That is at the forefront of our minds with all of the stories that we’ve broken for The Conners, and it will be on our minds for the last six.
The Conners are an unusually large sitcom family and the clan’s only gotten bigger since Roseanne’s title character died before the spinoff started.
While the door is open for D.J. and David to return to the Conners cast, this doesn’t necessarily mean that either will return for the show’s final season. The final season is only set to have six episodes, which will likely make scheduling returns for legacy characters complicated in the first place. However, the duo’s return is complicated by a variety of other factors as well, particularly the fact that Galecki has effectively retired from acting since the end of his long-running sitcom The Big Bang Theory in 2019.
Galecki’s final appearance on The Conners , also his final credited acting role at the time of writing, took place in season 2, episode 4, which aired five months after the finale of The Big Bang Theory .
The star has not been involved in either live-action acting or voice acting since the beginning of the 2020s. He likewise did not reprise his legacy character in the finale of the Big Bang Theory spinoff Young Sheldon, which recently ended after seven seasons, though it is unknown if he was offered the opportunity to appear. However, given the fact that he was a main character in that original show and only a supporting character on Roseanne, it ultimately seems unlikely that Johnny Galecki’s David will be seen again on The Conners.
Ultimately, Fishman’s return to The Conners seems more likely in terms of availability. The actor has continued to perform in the meantime, appearing in 2023’s Abducted by My Teacher. However, his return is complicated by the fact that he was dropped from the cast at the end of season 4 instead of making the decision to depart on his own. While he gave a statement at the time that made it seem like there were no hard feelings about the decision, this doesn’t necessarily mean that he would accept an invitation to return even if it was given.
