The Conners was a wealth of guest stars in Season 1, with Matthew Broderick, Katey Sagal (who'll be around more this season) and Peter Gallagher all joining the family in Lanford for some working class laughs. So, it was assumed that when the show got renewed for Season 2 some additional guest stars would be coming down the line to play a part in the lives of the often beleaguered Conner family. Well, now we know of at least one new guest star, and it's none other than Saturday Night Live vet Dan Aykroyd, who starred in the 1998 sequel Blues Brothers 2000 with The Conners star John Goodman.
According to TVLine, Dan Aykroyd will appear in the third episode of Season 2 of The Conners, and play a poker buddy of Dan's (John Goodman). Right now, we don't know if he's playing a new character of taking over a character who was seen in the original run of Roseanne, but either way this is expected to be his only appearance on the sitcom.
Dan Aykroyd, of course, is known for his time on SNL, where he was a cast member for the first four seasons, from 1975-1979. The '80s saw him become a major movie star with hits under his belt like The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, Ghostbusters (which finally has another sequel coming) and Driving Miss Daisy, for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. It was the sequel to one of his early hits, however, that brought him together with John Goodman for the first time.
The Blues Brothers, which starred Aykroyd and John Belushi and began as an SNL skit, went on to become hugely successful as well as a cult hit. The sequel, Blues Brothers 2000, was filmed almost 20 years after Belushi passed away and focused on Aykroyd's Elwood Blues getting released from prison after 18 years for the events of the first movie only to find out that his brother, Belushi's Jake Blues, had died. The film then follows Elwood as he tries to reform the Blues Brothers Band and have several wild adventures along the way.
John Goodman starred in the movie as "Mighty" Mack McTeer, the band's new lead singer (who was hired after he helped Elwood subdue two members of the Russian mafia) who goes along on Elwood's journey to help him track down as many former band members as possible. While the film did hold the Guinness Book of World Records title for the biggest car pile-up in a film and most cars destroyed during production, Blues Brothers 2000 was not a hit like its predecessor when it was released. It only made a little over $14 million against a budget of $31 million, and was also met with mostly negative reviews.
But, the good news for fans of The Conners would seem to be that Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman enjoyed working together on Blues Brothers 2000 and stayed friends in the intervening years. Otherwise, I don't know how Aykroyd's guest spot would have come about.
We can all see how Dan Aykroyd's small screen reunion with John Goodman goes when The Conners returns for Season 2, September 24 at 8 p.m. EST on ABC. Be sure to keep up with all of the upcoming television debuts with our 2019 fall premiere guide.
