The role that made John Goodman go berserk: “We’d be freaking out, scared shitless”
As the name would imply, John Goodman is generally regarded as a good man, as well as one of cinema’s most prolific and respected character actors. He rarely rocks the boat, he doesn’t get caught up in petty squabbles, and hasn’t made many enemies, although he was prone to losing his temper.
The only person who’s ever had bad words to say about Goodman is Goodman himself. He’s always been his own most vocal critic, which beggars belief when the proof is stacked sky high that he’s almost incapable of giving a bad performance, apart from maybe that time he admitted he sold out for the money.
He’s adamant that he sucked as Babe Ruth in the baseball legend’s biopic, wishes he’d gotten a second chance at Barton Fink, remains convinced he botched his only shot at working with Martin Scorsese, and didn’t even think of telling Steven Spielberg that he really didn’t want to play Fred Flintstone when the director anointed him as the character without asking him first.
Goodman also swore he’d avoid Kristen Wiig for the rest of his days after making an idiot of himself in front of her, so he hardly stands out as somebody who’d lose their rag at the merest provocation. Unfortunately, they call it the demon drink for a reason, and the star’s long-running battle with alcoholism didn’t always make him the easiest person to work with.
For a lot of people, or at least those who’ve never seen The Big Lebowski, Goodman will always be best known as Dan Conner, the lovable husband from Roseanne. He played the role for nine seasons, although he knows the show stuck around too long, but who’d turn down the chance to get paid for an extra couple of years even though their heart isn’t really in it?
Stuck in a recurring part he was increasingly falling out of love with, and spending a dangerous amount of his salary on booze, Roseanne Barr once shared that the crew used to be on tenterhooks every week before they filmed the latest episode, having been conditioned to expect Goodman’s behind-the-scenes issues and constant performance anxiety their problem, too.
“John used to go berserk on the set all the time, every Friday, just out of nervousness and all the shit,” she revealed. “John would pound the walls and scream, and we’d all be freaking out, scared shitless out of frustration.” Sitcoms aren’t usually associated with hostile environments, but struggling with addiction and knowing fine well that the series, and his part in it, were overstaying their welcome, Goodman terrified those around him.
In another life, he’d have never contemplated playing the family’s patriarch again, given how badly it affected him the first time around. However, getting sober in 2007 gave him a new lease of life, and Goodman was happy to oblige when the sequel series, The Conners, began airing in 2018.
20 years previously, he’d been hammering the walls and yelling at the top of his lungs, but things were much different when he reprised the role, and those 112 episodes across seven seasons went off without a hitch, apart from Barr being axed before it had premiered due to her controversial social media behaviour, but Goodman didn’t have anything to do with that, so the point still stands.
