Ames McNamara discusses the biggest challenges in filming live episodes of Conners

As Darlene’s youngest son, Ames McNamara made his debut in the Conners universe with the Roseanne revival, so he’s been around for a long time. This means he also had to be present due to the difficulty of hosting a live episode.

“Especially the live callers, it was very cool, but also very difficult,” McNamara said of the hardest part of filming live. The actor talked about how a big part of preparing for the live broadcast was dealing with what could go wrong and understanding that you can’t prepare for certain situations, like what a fan might say on the phone. Having room for uncertainty when dealing with live callers seems to be the biggest source of stress. It’s one thing to be prepared for technical problems that the crew can always fix, but what the caller might say is never known.

McNamara seemed to think that the second live broadcast was more difficult, as the first was more controlled by the crew. “After the call, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” McNamara said. This source of stress is also a source of entertainment and “spectator intrigue” as McNamara described it. Fortunately, despite all the uncertainty, everyone who called was very kind.