Laurie Metcalf is a three-time Emmy winner for her iconic run on Roseanne, but she credits another comedy legend for her most famous scene on the sitcom.
Currently starring on Netflix’s Big Mistakes, Metcalf appeared this week on The Drew Barrymore Show, where the host replayed the unforgettable performance by Metcalf in the season 5 episode of Roseanne, “Wait Till Your Father Gets Home.” Metcalf’s Jackie Harris is tasked with calling her hard of hearing aunt and informing her that Jackie’s father has passed away. Delivering this news proves to be a real struggle, and Metcalf must go from calm to frantic, before Jackie gives up and just tells her aunt that dad sends his love.
“You know who wrote that,” Metcalf asked Barrymore. “Norm Macdonald was one of the staff writers during that season, and he wrote that little scene.”
Both Barrymore and Macdonald were also frequent collaborators of Adam Sandler, and when Barrymore heard Metcalf name-checking the late Saturday Night Live icon, she referred to him as “the great Norm Macdonald.”
Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino is the credited writer on “Wait Till Your Father Gets Home,” but, as a staff writer, Macdonald likely could have pitched the phone call sequence as the writer’s room broke the episode. He worked on on Roseanne for just one season before he left to join the cast of Saturday Night Live, where he became the “Weekend Update” anchor.
After Roseanne concluded and Macdonald departed SNL, he and Metcalf reunited for the sitcom The Norm Show, which ran from 1999 to 2001, and featured the duo as social workers.
Metcalf later returned as Jackie in the Roseanne revival and subsequent spinoff The Conners. Macdonald died in Sept. 2021 after a battle with leukemia, and comedy titans like Sandler, David Letterman, and Steve Martin all paid tribute to the king of the dead pan delivery.
“In every important way, in the world of stand-up, Norm was the best,” Letterman said. “An opinion shared by me and all peers. Always up to something, never certain, until his matter-of-fact delivery leveled you. I was always delighted by his bizarre mind and earnest gaze. (I’m trying to avoid using the phrase, ‘twinkle in his eyes’). He was a lifetime Cy Young winner in comedy. Gone, but impossible to forget.”