Married… With Children debuted on Fox on April 5, 1987, and ran for 11 seasons, longer than any other live-action sitcom in the network’s history. The show starred Ed O’Neill as shoe salesman Al Bundy and Katey Sagal as his lazy wife, Peggy. Along for the ride were Christina Applegate as the couple’s daughter, Kelly, and David Faustino as their son, Bud. As with many beloved sitcoms, the series’ success was in part due to the casting being just right, and one can’t help but wonder how long it would’ve lasted under different circumstances. 

And, boy, were there different circumstances being floated around during Married… With Children’s conception. To begin with, series creators Ron Leavitt and Michael Moye first pitched the idea for the show by saying, “Imagine if Roseanne Barr married Sam Kinison and they had kids.” However, in his 2024 book, Married… With Children vs. the World: The Inside Story of the Shock-Com That Launched Fox and Changed TV Comedy Forever, the show’s producer, Richard Gurman, revealed that Leavitt and Moye weren’t even really looking to cast Barr or Kinison. 

As Moye told Gurman, “We never liked working with comedians, because they come in with their character already.” “What were we going to do, tell Roseanne how to do her ‘domestic goddess’ thing?” he continued. “We were gonna tell Sam Kinison how to do his thing? There’d be fighting all the time.” Leavitt and Moye didn’t make those feelings clear to the production studio, though, and were horrified to learn that Barr and Kinison had actually been offered the roles of Al and Peggy.

Barr turned it down, telling the press it wasn’t for her and calling the show “really caustic and vicious.” Kinison opted out as well, but later appeared in two episodes as Al’s guardian angel, and left a lasting impression on everyone involved. The comedian mooned the cast and crew on his first day, and followed that up by getting strippers to serve lunch to his co-stars. Kinison also threatened to shoot the show’s director, Gerry Cohen, after Cohen went to Kinison’s house to look for his girlfriend one night. Needless to say, the producers were relieved that they didn’t end up having to deal with those kinds of antics on a regular basis.

In yet another funny twist, Katey Sagal, who got Barr’s part on Married… With Children, would show up on the Roseanne replacement series, The Connors, as Barr’s former TV husband’s love interest years later.