The Truth About Sara Gilbert And Johnny Galecki's Relationship

Many "Roseanne" viewers grew up alongside Johnny Galecki and Sara Gilbert, but they might still find it hard to believe that the two former child stars now have kids of their own. It's not uncommon for co-stars on popular sitcoms to drift apart as they move on to other projects and form new relationships. However, fans might find it comforting to know that Gilbert and Galecki remained friends and found a few more opportunities to work together.

Many once-popular child stars vanished after experiencing success early in life, but not Gilbert and Galecki. The former was just 13 years old when she scored her role in "Roseanne," which premiered in 1988. Her character, Darlene Connor, was a cynical, rebellious tomboy who was perfectly capable of holding her own against her sharp-tongued parents, the titular Roseanne and Dan Conner, played by comedy powerhouses Roseanne Barr and John Goodman. Galecki joined the "Roseanne" cast during its fourth season in 1992, when he was 16. On the show, he played Darlene's boyfriend and eventual husband, David Healy, the sweet and sensitive to her sour and stubborn.

While every Hollywood story has its low points, Gilbert and Galecki certainly had steadier trajectories than Barr, whose problematic behavior has tarnished her reputation and derailed her career. It might help that the pair have always had each other to lean on. "[Sara Gilbert] has a true heart that over the years has probably kept me from losing my mind in this industry," Galecki wrote of his friend in a 2018 Instagram post. This is just one example of their deep, enduring bond.

Before Johnny Galecki got cast on "Roseanne," he appeared alongside Roseanne Barr in the 1991 TV movie "Backfield in Motion." In a 2009 interview with Time Out, he said he had left enough of an impression on Barr that she cast him as David Healy in her eponymous sitcom. But it turns out there's a little more to this story.

When they appeared together in a 2018 CBS video promoting the series "Living Biblically," Galecki said to Sara Gilbert, "The only reason I was cast on that show, I think, is because you had told Roseanne that you had a crush on me, and so she wanted to introduce us." After Gilbert joked about having that much of an influence over Barr, Galecki recalled that he and Gilbert also attended Barr's second wedding to Tom Arnold in 1991. "All I can remember is feeling very awkward, having a date," he said.

Contributing to the awkwardness was the surreal reality that Galecki's date was someone he had been watching from the comfort of his living room before meeting her in person. "I was a massive fan of the show," he told The A.V. Club. Like many other American families of the '80s and '90s, it seems the entire Galecki clan considered "Roseanne" must-see TV. "That show's time slot really governed when my family ate dinner," he revealed. He also described his first day on the job, recalling, "I was very intimidated, being on that set, surrounded by television heroes of mine. That scared little rabbit that I was, observing all of this from the shadowy corners of the stage."

Sara Gilbert lived the dream of many teen girls by winning the heart of her famous crush. While filming "Roseanne," she and Johnny Galecki joined the ranks of celebrities who dated their on-screen love interests. But Gilbert eventually realized that they just didn't have the same spark as their characters. "He would come over and we would, like, make out, and then I would start to get depressed," she recalled on "The Talk" in 2013 (via Today).

Gilbert decided to talk to Galecki about what was going on, which took courage, considering they were co-stars who had to continue working together. "I eventually told him I thought it was about my sexuality, and he was super sweet about it," she said. Before she opened up about that difficult and confusing time in her life on "The Talk," Gilbert reached out to her friend to make sure he was comfortable with it. "He was like, 'Of course. I love you, and I think it's really important and I'm so proud of you. If you want, I will be there, and I will hold your hand,'" she recalled.

Gilbert had previously come out as gay in 2010, and just a year earlier, Galecki had said something that made the LGBTQ+ community embrace him as a pretty awesome ally. With regard to online rumors that he was also gay, he told Time Out, "I've never really addressed it because why defend yourself against something that's not offensive?" And although their real-life romance didn't last, Galecki celebrated his friendship with Gilbert in a 2015 Instagram post that read, "Happy Birthday to my first wife."

Fans celebrated what would be the first of a few reunions between Johnny Galecki and Sara Gilbert when the latter was cast on "The Big Bang Theory" as Leslie Winkle, an experimental physicist. Galecki's character, Leonard Hofstadter, pursues a romantic relationship with Leslie, but she's only interested in having no-strings-attached sex. To seduce him, she injects a conversation about playing string instruments with innuendos and double entendres.

On "The Official Big Bang Theory Podcast," Gilbert said co-creator Chuck Lorre invited her to appear on the show's first season. She was excited about getting to work with Galecki again, saying of their connection, "We just have chemistry as friends, and I think it translates for some reason. ... some actors you work with, and it's just magical." Galecki, on the other hand, was a little more reticent about casting Gilbert on the show. "I had a concern—that it would come off as gimmicky," he admitted to The A.V. Club. However, his fondness for Gilbert prevailed over his qualms about what people would think. "Life's just too short to not work with people that you adore working with," he said.

Sadly, Gilbert only appeared in nine episodes as Leslie. On the podcast, she revealed that she would have liked to pop up more often but said, "I think the writers kind of hit a wall with the character." Despite her scarcity on the series, Leslie remains a fan favorite on r/bigbangtheory on Reddit, where admirers have created threads with titles such as, "Anyone else kinda wish Leslie Winkle hadn't left the show?" Gilbert also revealed that her daughter, Sawyer, found Leslie hilarious when they watched the episode "The Hamburger Postulate."

During their time playing love interests on "The Big Bang Theory," Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco dated in real life. They decided it would be best to keep their relationship on the down low to maintain some separation between themselves and their characters in the minds of fans. Sadly, the secrecy took its toll on the couple, and Cuoco and Galecki broke up in 2009 after two years of dating. But just like Galecki and Sara Gilbert, they were amicable exes. "We're dear friends, still. Kaley's not just an ex, she's a part of my life," Galecki said in a 2013 interview with CBS Watch! magazine (via Us Weekly). 

Cuoco also opened up about her romance with Galecki on "The Talk" in 2013. Gilbert just so happened to be the daytime talk show's creator and one of its co-hosts, so she was there to make her own big revelation about the relationship. "I knew! I knew!" she said. Cuoco laughed in response and confirmed Gilbert's claim, saying, "She definitely knew." Cuoco expressed gratitude that she and Galecki had remained friends, but she wasn't the ex who got a special shoutout in one of his 2018 Instagram posts. Galecki was dating Alaina Meyer at the time, and he posted a photo of the two of them posing with Gilbert. "Two of the very favorite women in my life," he wrote in the caption (via OK! USA). "You keep my heart swelling and healthy ..."

Johnny Galecki teamed up with Sara Gilbert again in 2018 when he cast her in a CBS series he was producing, "Living Biblically." The short-lived sitcom also starred Jay R. Ferguson, who would later appear alongside Galecki and Gilbert on "The Conners" as the former's romantic rival and the latter's love interest. Of his decision to bring Gilbert on board, Galecki told Variety, "I knew how much she wanted to inhabit a character again. So I knew that she would come at it, despite all of her years of experience, with a whole lot of commitment and a whole lot of excitement."

During that same period, Gilbert was still fleshing out some details of her own passion project: the "Roseanne" revival. She was about to shoot the "Living Biblically" pilot in front of a live studio audience when she decided to have a discussion with Galecki about the future of his "Roseanne" character since the show's original 1997 finale. When he appeared with Gilbert on "The Talk" in early 2018, Galecki recalled how she reacted to his input. "I see her lips start to quiver, and her eyes fill up with tears ... and the audience is filtering in. I'm like, 'Don't you freakin' cry! You can't cry right now. You're going to ruin my show; stop it!'" Gilbert defended her reaction in an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, saying, "When we're dealing with that relationship, it naturally felt emotional to me."

Sara Gilbert managed to make it through the "Living Biblically" pilot, but it was canceled after just one season. Luckily, she had a little better luck with "Roseanne." She managed to convince Johnny Galecki to resume his role as David Healy, and he made his first appearance in the fifth episode of the revival. By then, viewers had already gotten to know Darlene Conner and David's son, Mark Conner-Healy, who was played by Ames McNamara.

On "The Talk," Gilbert revealed that she had suggested the name Mark for their characters' son during a text conversation with Galecki. "I don't think we've ever agreed on anything so quickly," Galecki said (via Today). The name was a way to honor Glenn Quinn, the actor who had played David's brother, Mark Healy, on "Roseanne." Sadly, Quinn died in 2002, and "Roseanne" producers decided not to recast him in the revival. Instead, it was revealed that the elder Mark's death had left Becky Conner-Healy (Lecy Goranson) a widow.

After their reunion in one episode of the "Roseanne" revival, Sara Gilbert and Johnny Galecki didn't appear on-screen together again until after Roseanne Barr's racist social media posts resulted in the show's cancellation. The series was then rebooted as "The Conners," and Barr's character was killed off. On this iteration of the sitcom, Jay R. Ferguson's character, Ben Olinsky, was introduced as a new love interest for Darlene, which resulted in a lot of awkwardness when she rekindled her old spark with David Healy.

In the second episode of Season 2, "A Kiss is Just a Kiss," Darlene finds herself caught in a messy love triangle. To make matters worse, Ben shows up at her door the morning after David sleeps over. While trying to juggle the two men without them encountering each other, she kisses David passionately in the living room, does the same with Ben on the porch, then shares another quick smooch with David in the kitchen. During a 2019 appearance on "Live with Kelly and Ryan," Gilbert described how weird it was to film that ping-pong kissing scene, recalling, "I was thinking, 'I've just kissed Johnny, and now I'm kissing Jay,' and then you feel bad." 

Ryan Seacrest offered his take on the awkward situation, joking, "It's like 'Bachelor in Paradise.'" Gilbert agreed and further pointed out that if just one of the three parties involved had been sick, they likely all would have been out of commission for a bit. "It's wildly unhealthy," she said.

Sara Gilbert and Johnny Galecki's "Roseanne" characters welcomed their first child on the show in 1997. However, it wasn't until 2004 that one of the actors became a first-time parent. That year, Gilbert and her then-partner, Ali Adler, celebrated the birth of their son, Levi Hank Gilbert-Adler. Daughter Sawyer Jane Gilbert-Adler joined the family three years later. 

Just weeks after being born, Sawyer accompanied her mother to the set of "The Big Bang Theory" in 2007, and it was there that she made Galecki's acquaintance. In an interview with OK!, he said of the infant, "She's the most beautiful child I've ever seen." However, he also confessed that he wasn't comfortable holding Sawyer, explaining, "She's much too fragile for my clumsy hands. I'll wait five or six years [to have my own kids]."

Galecki ended up waiting a bit longer than that. Over a decade later, he and Alaina Meyer welcomed their son, Avery, in 2019. On "The Talk," Gilbert recounted how Galecki broke the news to her during the wrap party for "The Big Bang Theory," which ended that same year. "I burst into tears, so tears are coming down my face ... and Stephanie, [Aisha Tyler's former make-up artist on 'The Talk'] sees me and she walks up and says, 'I know, isn't it so sad that the show is ending?'" she recalled (via People). "And I couldn't say anything, so I was like, 'Oh yes, yes.'"

When "Shameless" star Emma Kenney was cast as the daughter of Johnny Galecki and Sara Gilbert's characters on "Roseanne," her contenders for the role included a pop star who is now massively successful: Sabrina Carpenter. The "Espresso" singer got a nice consolation prize: Carpenter went on to become Taylor Swift's bestie and a chart-topping artist. Additionally, many fans felt Kenney was perfect for the role of Harris Conner-Healy due to her resemblance to the actors playing her parents. "She looks like both of them but a little more like Sara; they did well with the casting, for sure," wrote one Redditor in r/shameless.

While chatting with ET in 2018, Kenney agreed that she and Gilbert look a lot alike, saying, "It's insane how uncanny our resemblance is." She also praised Gilbert's work ethic in a video interview with Starry Constellation Magazine, saying, "Sarah's great. I definitely look up to her a lot, honestly. ... It's very fun to watch the way her brain works." As for Galecki, she also had nothing but good things to say about him, too. "Johnny is so awesome. He's such a nice guy. He's so warm and friendly. He's so funny," she gushed to Decider.

When Kenney spoke to ET again in 2019, she revealed that she was rooting for her TV parents to work things out. "I think that they balance each other out, and they're just perfect for each other," she said.

Unfortunately, Emma Kenney's dream of David and Darlene's love story ending on a happy note didn't come true. Because Johnny Galecki stopped filming episodes of "The Conners" after Season 2, David became a deadbeat dad. "[Galecki] really did not want to keep doing it," executive producer Bruce Helford explained to Deadline after the series finale in April 2025. It seems the writers and producers felt their only options were to kill David off or explain that he had ditched his family. "Unfortunately his character got tarnished in that way," Helford said. In a 2018 interview with TVLine, Sara Gilbert said that if Galecki had refused to appear on the "Roseanne" revival, the original plan would have been the same as David's sad ending: The revelation that he was not an active participant in his children's lives.

It was a disappointing conclusion to the story of a character many fans loved, and it's possible that David got the short end of the stick because Galecki was content at his new home in Nashville, Tennessee, where he had moved with his two kids and wife, Morgan, in 2020. The move came up during a 2024 CinemaBlend interview. In response to a question about Galecki's potential return, Jay R. Ferguson said, "We can't drag him out of the woods of Tennessee." Gilbert concurred, saying, "Yeah, he's pretty happy right now."

Galecki and his wife had welcomed a daughter, Oona, around the time the show was winding down, so it's possible he prioritized his personal obligations over professional ones. There were no hard feelings with Gilbert, who told Yahoo! Entertainment of her friend, "He truly is like a member of my family."