Fans of the classic sitcom Roseanne rejoiced when ABC announced a revival season is on the way, and it was more or less determined that the entire cast of regulars would return to reprise their memorable roles, finales be damned. One name that has remained mostly absent from conversations about the show is current The Big Bang Theory star Johnny Galecki, who first rose to TV fame as Roseanne's David Healy. Thankfully, ABC President Channing Dungey has confirmed that Galecki's return isn't automatically a no-go, but things aren't all cleared up just yet.
Those conversations are still in progress.
It's not exactly the War and Peace of answers, but so long as Channing Dungey didn't tell the TCA summer press tour crowd (via TVLine) that David was being written out of the show and replaced with a talking CGI creature, we're content to be content. Considering Johnny Galecki has been a star on TV's most popular comedy for a decade now, it wouldn't be outside the realm of reality for the actor to simply be too busy to go back to one of TV"s other most popular comedies.
Several elements are working in Roseanne's favor, though, as far as securing Johnny Galecki for the revival. For one, the shortened new season will only be eight episodes long, so that's automatically less time he'd need to worry about being around on that set instead of Big Bang Theory's various apartments. Plus, the CBS series takes a filming hiatus ahead of the winter break, so that could serve as a proper time for him to film for Roseanne. (Assuming he's not interested in such things as "rest" and "actually having time off of work," of course.)
Another obvious, though potentially disappointing, way for Johnny Galecki to confirm an appearance as David is for the creative team to knowingly write him into the season in an extremely limited format, necessitating only a small amount of actual time on the screen. Such things can be fleshed out by various mentions from other characters, as well as phone calls, although we'd hope that would be a worst case scenario option.
After all, Roseanne will be introducing audiences to not just the one child that David and Darlene conceived during the sitcom's original run, but also a second child that was birthed in the 20-year interim. (Casting is still happening for those two roles.) As well, the revival will somehow address the death of Glenn Quinn, who played Becky's husband and David's brother Mark Healy, so we'll definitely need the surviving brother to pay his respects in whatever way the writers see fit.
For now, we'll still waiting to hear in what capacity Johnny Galecki's David will appear on Roseanne's revival, but we know it'll be airing in early 2018, so hopefully those "conversations" will wrap soon sooner, as opposed to later. In the meantime, don't forget that Roseanne's full run is now available to stream, and then check out our summer premiere schedule and our fall TV schedule to see what new and returning shows will be back soon.
