‘The Conners” Lecy Goranson Reveals Which Joke Made the Audience Laugh for Four Minutes

Very few actors get to live with a character for as long as the cast of ABC’s The Conners have. The icons of blue collar culture debuted 31 years ago and they’re still going strong as they head into the a new season of their revival run.

But just because we know and love the Conner family doesn’t mean we know what to expect from the show. That’s definitely the case with eldest daughter Becky, who stepped into the spotlight in a major way when The Conners launched a year ago. Once the straight-laced and level-headed daughter (at least compared to the spitfire of teenage Darlene), Becky became the go-to character for off-the-wall jokes and self-deprecation in The Conners‘ freshman season. After hundreds of episodes, it was finally Becky’s time to shine.

Lecy Goranson, who played Becky on almost all of the original Roseanne run and returned for the revival and relaunch as The Conners, has taken to Becky’s new status as a joke machine like a shark to a tornado. Ahead of The Conners Season 2’s premiere on ABC, Decider got the chance to talk to this original member of the Conner family and find out more about Becky’s past, present, and future.

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Decider: The vibe of Season 2 feels even more confident, like the cast hit the ground running. Does it feel that way on set?

Lecy Goranson: Yeah. I mean, I feel like we had a good time off, and we kind of got a break, and then everybody was ready to get back to it. It’s funny that you saw that through the episodes, because I definitely felt that way. Everyone was very happy to be back.

Yeah, and it also feels even more like a whole ensemble this time around, even more than it did in Season 1.

Yeah, I think you’re right, though. My guess is that this season we’ll be seeing even more ensemble, you know what I mean? I think we had that last season, too, but that’s the thing I love. There are so many stories, it just feels almost like theater in a way, that everyone’s got their part. We’re kind of moving and a-grooving over here.

Becky especially. I wrote an article last November calling Becky the breakout character of The Conners because she took me by surprise. When you think of classic Roseanne, Jackie or Darlene usually get the jokes. Did you feel that Becky was starting to get a lot of the weirder jokes and the good one-liners in Season 1 of The Conners?

Yeah, well I think it’s really funny. I appreciate you saying that, because as actors we want to feel like people are writing different things for us so we can show different sides. I feel like Becky has always been funny, but she was traditionally written as the straight-man. So I love—I mean, are you kidding? As an actor and my ego, being able to throw some Conner zingers, I’m like, “It’s about time!” But yeah, she is pretty funny.

That’s clear right at the beginning of the Conners pilot, right after they find those pills in Roseanne’s closet.

Yeah! [Laughs] That was just a lightning strike joke, and then we held in that moment for like four minutes while the audience continued to laugh. I would love to see the whole take of that, because it really was incredible. Especially because of everything that we went through—I mean, the show starts on a pretty sad note so everyone wanted something to get us out of that a little bit.

How do you handle those kind of jokes, the ones that are there to relieve tension?

Well, I think a lot of it is just being in the moment and trusting in the moment. I don’t know what to say about delivery, but I know that it really comes out of—it’s like, I think of that line in the [Season 2 premiere] when Becky has just given birth and Darlene says, “Don’t worry, Harris turned out okay” and Becky goes, “No she didn’t!” It’s just right out of her despair, but the joke is that it’s kind of the truth. I think the funniest jokes come from that kind of truth, like we all know she screwed up and Becky is just gonna call it out.

You’re getting a lot more scenes with Laurie Metcalf in Season 2. What is it like working with someone of Laurie Metcalf’s Oscar-nominated stature, especially since you worked with her as a teenager and now you’re working with her as an adult?

It’s so awesome. I think every day, “I’m so lucky,” especially because I’m from Chicago and Laurie was kind of the actress of the moment at [the theatre company] Steppenwolf at the time when we were both cast. My parents would come home from seeing theater in Chicago and talk on and on about her performances and she’d been a legend already in Chicago, so I’ve always really admired her. But you know, you’ve got to keep up with her. She’s technically really incredible. Like I always say, you look at the actors on our show, people don’t just roll up out of bed and are geniuses. People work really hard. The best actors work the hardest, so that has to be said. I don’t know, it’s like playing baseball with your favorite player, like, “Oh man, I’ve got to step up to the plate now.”

I know you probably can’t say anything because the Halloween episodes are always such a big deal, but last year’s Sinead O’Connor/Sharknado mashup costume—

Oh yeah! It’s funny because I got makeup done for press today, and my primary makeup person wasn’t here because she had another gig, so of all the pictures she sent that she wanted my makeup to look like, today for me was the Sharknado Connor picture. So I looked at that, and there I was with my bald head and those sharks eating me, and I thought, “Oh my God, that was just one week last year of the show!”

Is there any way to top that this year? What would you want to do to top that?

I don’t know! That was something else, and I’ll tell you, rehearsing those scenes all week and then suddenly being in that—because those skull caps are pretty tight on your head, it just of makes your performance different. Especially if you’re surrounded by wires with rubber sharks on them. And everyone’s going around—this is one of these surreal things. Sometimes I think about wearing a GoPro on set, because people are looking, like, “Well I think there should be more shark blood here,” “Well when the shark bites her, you know, I think the shark would be—” and you’re just like, “What is this job that I’m doing?” It’s so bizarre!

But the joke is that the Conners were traditionally, historically socioeconomically challenged but then we have the top prosthetic person come in and do this perfect bald cap equipped with spackle paint to look like hair growth. I sent the picture to my parents right after I had my bald cap on, and my dad called me and he said, “Why did you do that?” He said, “Mom is crying in the corner because you shaved your head,” and I said, “What?!” I said, “Why do you think the show would want me to shave my head?” and they said, “There’s no way that that’s not a shaved head.” As poor as the Conners are, they can afford the top Hollywood makeup person for prosthetics in the whole town.

I wanted to ask about Johnny Galecki coming back for a couple more episodes this year. Are we going to get to see some of their relationship, how they relate to each other after Mark’s passing?

Yeah, that’s a really good question. [David and Darlene are] family because they have kids, the storyline is so focused on that. That’s a really interesting point. Becky, also, isn’t really privy to what’s going on in Darlene’s romantic life, so that’s kind of interesting too. I’m curious as to how the writers are going to introduce Becky to all of that, because Darlene and Becky are, as we know, frenemies since birth, but they are very close.

And if things get tense, the writers can just put in a Becky zinger to lighten the mood. 

She’s getting the jokes.

The Conners Season 2 premieres on ABC on September 24 at 8 p.m. ET. This interview has been edited for clarity.

Stream The Conners on Hulu