Roseanne Barr's real-life injury inspired 'The Addiction' episode on the show
Anyone who is keeping up with the Roseanne reboot would have seen Roseanne Baar limping around on the set while complaining about a bad knee. As it turns out, none of it was acting. When the show had started, Roseanne was experiencing real-life knee injury which she suffered from falling down in a park in San Francisco.
Rather than seeing this as a disadvantage, the writers decided to incorporate it into the plot of the show. Talking to GoodHousekeeping.com, Bruce Rasmussen, co-executive producer of Roseanne said, "[We thought], ‘So let’s just say she’s hurt her knee.’” Several episodes of the show have dealt with the incident but the most talked about episode became “Netflix & Pill.”
During the episode, one can find Roseanne getting emotional while she admits that she has been struggling with an addiction to the painkillers. The actress is seen revealing that the addiction arose after she understood that she won't be able to afford the operation she needs.
She goes on to confess that she has been hiding pills around the house under different prescriptions. After hearing Roseanne's side of the story, her on-screen husband Dan is seen confronting his wife and suggests that they would do everything in their power to make sure she is able to get the surgery.
The Roseanne reboot has never shied away from talking about the current problems and addiction happens to be one of them. Seeing Roseanne and her personal struggle, they thought it would be the perfect opportunity to bring this into the series. “From the pilot on, we wanted to deal with the healthcare system and how it doesn’t necessarily work for working class people and people on the margins of society,” Bruce told the website.
“My mother had to get her knees replaced and luckily because my father was a cop, my parents had insurance. But there are all these articles about how people don’t have $200 in an emergency. It starts to dictate choices you make that you might not want to make.”