‘The Conners’ First Photo Revealed

In the first photo released from the set of The Conners, all of the ABC sitcom’s principal actors are featured — except Roseanne Barr, of course, whose firing could be argued as the main reason for the Roseanne spinoff’s existence.

Sara Gilbert, Michael Fishman, John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf and Lecy Goranson are all featured in the new photo from The Conners‘ first table read, as well as Jayden Rey, Ames McNamara and Emma Kenney, who were recently added as series regulars.

The Conners, first announced in June and set to premiere on Tuesday, Oct. 16, will pick up after a “sudden turn of events” as “the Conners are forced to face the daily struggles of life in Lanford in a way they never have before.”

While there’s no official word on how the spinoff’s story will move on without Barr and her matriarchal character, Goodman told The Sunday Times earlier this week that he assumes she will be killed off.

“It’s an unknown. I guess he’ll be mopey and sad because his wife’s dead,” Goodman told the British publication of his character Dan Conners in the upcoming spinoff, reports Deadline.

The Conners writers are keeping the plot so close to the vest, in fact, that they and producers have ditched email as a way of communicating in order to prevent potential leaks. ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey told Deadline earlier this month that the show is employing heavy security and relying on hand-delivered communications.

“What I can tell you is that thematically we will be focusing on a lot of the same themes that we were in the first nine episodes — what it’s like today for a family to make ends meet in a world where they might be going into foreclosure, where work is scarce, where there are a lot of different challenges in terms of raising children as a single parent. All these issues are going to still be at the forefront,” she said.

Elsewhere in his Sunday Times interview, Goodman also said that he was left “broken-hearted” by ABC’s decision to cancel Roseanne in May following a racist tweet from Barr.

“[B]ut I thought, ‘OK, it’s just show business, I’m going to let it go,’” Goodman said. “But I went through a period, about a month, where I was very depressed. I’m a depressive anyway, so any excuse that I can get to lower myself, I will. But that had a great deal to do with it, more than I wanted to admit.”

He also added that he knows “for a fact that she’s not a racist,” adding that he was surprised by ABC’s reaction to Barr’s tweet that compared former Obama Administration adviser Valerie Jarrett, who is black, to an ape.

“I’ll put it this way, I was surprised at the response. And that’s probably all I should say about it,” Goodman said, referring to ABC’s decision to fire Barr.

The Conners premieres Tuesday, Oct. 16 on ABC in the same 8 p.m. ET time slot Roseanne held last spring.