John Goodman weighs in on the state of TV, ponders whether he'd work with Roseanne Barr again

John Goodman is currently serving as president of the fiction jury at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival (our boy is officially fancy, America), and he apparently took the prestigious gig as an opportunity to drop a dozen or so interesting opinions on the topic of television (via Variety). These aren’t necessarily spicy “go off, king” opinions, but if you’ve ever been curious about where Goodman stands on things, here you go.

The most notable of his proclamations, probably, is that Goodman has no regrets about speaking up in defense of Roseanne Barr after she was fired from the Roseanne reboot over a racist Tweet (one that she had said at the time was caused by tweeting while on Ambien), but he also says that he “felt bad for her” at the time since everyone was “just attacking” her. That all being said, Goodman won’t really commit to answering whether or not he’d work with her again: “I don’t know. If she’d liked to… I just don’t know. I miss her.” He also added, “I wish her well.”

Goodman also discussed some other old collaborators, specifically Joel and Ethan Coen (Goodman appeared in a bunch of their films, including The Big Lebowski and Inside Llewyn Davis, before the duo went their separate ways), and he seems similarly unconvinced about ever working with them again—and not because they don’t even work with each other anymore. He says they always got a long because he and the brothers were “Midwestern transplants to New York,” and he has nothing but nice to say about their writing and their sense of humor. However, he says it’s been “so long” since he’s seen them that he thinks his “tickets have run out on the Coen brothers.” (But, again, they don’t even make movies with each other anymore.)

Back to TV, Goodman has spent his time in Monaco watching TV shows from all over the world, and he says foreign TV is generally “very good,” but he quipped that there isn’t much of a difference between American TV and international TV these days anyway, since “both sides have mandatory fucking now.” (Funny, but the TV shows that he’s on don’t really have sex scenes, do they?)

Speaking of the shows he’s on, Goodman (rightfully) highlighted how good The Righteous Gemstones is, partially because he gets to be a straight man opposite all of his significantly zanier co-stars, so he just gets to “sit back and watch a free show.” He’s really just living it up and having a great time. Good(man) for him.