Rather than going out with a light whimper or disgruntled moan, The Conners is gearing up for a big and eventful final season when the ABC sitcom hits the 2025 TV premiere schedule in March. Fans can likely expect to see more than a few guest stars paying visits to Lanford, and while pop star Sabrina Carpenter probably won’t be one of them, it turns out the “Espresso” singer could have legitimately been part of the titular family had her audition been embraced more.
That’s right, the 25-year-old Grammy nominee was apparently in the running to portray the role of Darlene’s eldest child Harris Conner, with Shameless vet Emma Kenney going on to land the role. But as far as former Roseanne executive producer Whitney Cummings goes, the world lucked out by Carpenter getting turned down. Talking to People about that potential casting bombshell, the stand-up comedian said:
Sabrina Carpenter auditioned ... and it wasn't the right fit. She got a rejection that day when we were casting the daughter. And by the way, thank God we said no to her, because she'd be stuck on a sitcom set and not being Sabrina Carpenter.
As odd as it might sound for a show creative to say "Thank God" about not landing a currently huge talent for a TV role, her sentiment obviously makes sense. For one, Emma Kenney has crushed it as the slacker-leaning rebel Harris for seven seasons of TV at this point, so it's hard to even think about someone else in that role.
Second, if Carpenter was focused on sitcom work for the past seven years, she might not have been able to flesh out her music career to the point where she could make appearances at Taylor Swift concerts and headline her own giant tours. I mean, it's certainly possible, since John Goodman has balanced his co-starring role in The Righteous Gemstones with playing Dan Conner, but those schedules aren't exactly the same.
Given the timing of everything, it appears as if Sabrina Carpenter would have been auditioning for Harris Conner right around (or soon after) the time when Disney Channel canceled Girl Meets World in Summer 2017. For three seasons, the actress starred as Maya Hart on the spinoff of the TGIF favorite, and also co-performed the theme song. So she was seemingly primed for more Disney-produced family comedy.
Only that didn't actually happen, with Emma Kenney winning the role for one reason or another. And in Whitney Cummings' mind, that kind of outwardly "bad news" can be as much of a blessing as anything. As she put it:
I think that we're still trained in our society to want to win and get a yes. Sometimes a yes is the worst thing you can get, because then you're stuck on the wrong show for 7 years. You're in the wrong thing.
Now that we know this interesting bit of sitcom trivia, I have a few questions about how things would have gone if Sabrina Carpenter had landed the role.
Would Carpenter have played Harris just on The Conners, or did she initially audition for Roseanne? Considering the People story only notes The Conners when addressing Cummings' comments, are we meant to believe that Carpenter would have replaced Harris for the spinoff after Roseanne Barr's firing? Or was it meant to be implied that the surname title was being used as a catch-all that included its predecessor?
Would Carpenter have dyed her hair brown to play Harris? Considering both Sara Gilbert's Darlene and Johnny Galecki's David are both brunettes with wavy curls, a strikingly blonde child would probably stick out. (Also, is it a thing for one's eyes to be too round and open to be a Conner?) Granted, Becky pulled off a blonde look despite Roseanne and Dan being brunettes, so maybe it wouldn't have been so weird.
Could The Conners' fame have actually helped Sabrina Carpenter's career? One of the arguably odder things about the pop star's Grammy nomination for Best New Artist is that her current smash Short n' Sweet is actually her sixth album. She'd previously been under contract with Disney for those first five albums that didn't quite capture the zeigeist like #6. But would that have been different if she was starring in one of broadcast's most popular comedies during that time span?
Will Sabrina Carpenter cameo in The Conners' final season? Simlar to the way Roseanne and The Conners have poked fun at Lecy Goranson and Sarah Chalke swapping the role of Becky Conner over the years, it would be fun to see an episode's cold open as a dream sequence where Carpenter is in the role of Harris. Likely not the easiest cameo to pull off, but I'm here for it if the creative team figures it out.
Though fans will be waiting far longer than usual for The Conners to return with new episodes, Tim Allen's return to ABC sitcom-dom is on the horizon, with his new show Shifting Gears premiering in January. Perhaps we'll find out in a few years that Chappel Roan auditioned for Kat Dennings' role in the show.
