45 years into his acting career, John Goodman remains a busy man. Between filming for ABC’s Roseanne spinoff The Conners, and waxing religious on HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones, Goodman shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Recently, the Emmy winner spoke up about why he isn’t settling into a life of retirement.
John Goodman has had a long and successful career thus far. The actor, now 67, has made a name for himself playing memorable characters across television and movies, but just as he was thinking of slowing things down on the career front, his workload picked back up again. When asked about the time he commits to his work, Goodman admitted that he enjoys being busy, though he never intended to be working on two ongoing TV projects at once. Here’s what he had to say:
I don’t have a lot of downtime. See, I was going to start slowing down about now. I thought we’d only do eight or 10 [episodes of] Roseanne a year. And I do eight Righteous Gemstones, eight or nine. But, yeah I didn’t know Righteous Gemstones was gonna come up. And then when I took it, I got the other job back [for The Conners pickup].
The job he got back was playing Dan Conner, a role he’d initially reprised for the revival of Roseanne in 2018. However, that series’ life was cut short following Roseanne Barr’s firing from the show and its subsequent cancellation. ABC execs then decided to continue the show as The Conners (which is doing a live episode), and quickly killed off Barr’s character via exposition, something the actress wasn’t very happy about.
Combined with the extended episode count that ABC granted The Conners, that explains how John Goodman unintentionally ended up working on two jobs at once instead of taking it easy. I can understand why he wouldn’t want to slow down or retire, though. Goodman’s been afforded a lot of opportunities to do great work in quality projects and, hey, if the actor still finds it in him to keep working, then more power to him.
Personally, I’m sure everyone would like to retire at some point in their lives, so maybe John Goodman’s just waiting for the right time to do so. In an interview conducted during the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour, Goodman told Fox News and other reporters he has actually thought about retiring before. In his words:
Yeah, I did a couple years ago. I was bored a lot. This could be a retirement job. Yeah. It’s just everything’s so great right now and terrific that I’ll worry about it when the time comes.
John Goodman is working hard on The Conners, which airs every Tuesday at 8 p.m. on ABC, as well as HBO’s Righteous Gemstones, which was renewed for Season 2 and will return later this year. For more on what to watch, be sure to check out our 2020 midseason schedule for updated premiere dates and times.
