The article contains spoilers for The Conners’ series finale.

The Conners—the sitcom born out of Roseanne‘s cancellation (both by ABC and in real life)—ended its run Wednesday night. But the show, already an unexpected hit, had one more surprise in store for its producers.

Last night’s episode began as a pretty typical sitcom farewell. Each of the characters reached a point of real growth and happiness in their lives before sitting down in the family living room to say a final goodbye. That’s when things started to go off script. The actors—John Goodman as Dan, Laurie Metcalf as Jackie, Ames McNamara as Mark, Lecy Goranson as Becky, Sara Gilbert as Darlene, and Jay R. Ferguson as Ben—got more and more emotional as the cameras rolled, before Goodman eventually looked directly at the camera and said a tearful goodnight to the audience.

“It was a surprise to us,” executive producer Dave Caplan said of the moment in an interview with TheWrap. “We did not know they were going to get there emotionally.” 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in a sitcom, or maybe even a drama, where the actors show the real emotions they are having,” fellow EP Bruce Helford added. “It was so touching and so real that we decided to leave… Dan saying goodbye to the audience, that was all John and it was wonderful.”

Many of these actors have worked together for decades now, not just on The Conners but on Roseanne‘s original run. To them, this was more than just a final shoot. “When Laurie said goodnight, there was nothing [scripted] about saying goodbye to each other that way,” Helford said in a separate conversation with TVLine. “When she went to the door, she chose to pause and do that, and it broke everybody. They realized she was saying goodbye forever, and so they all responded in that way.”

The two EPs said they “worked pretty hard to avoid end of series cliches” and instead “want the sincerity and the legacy of the finale to be noted.” They continued: “No one ever thought any of these things would come back. We started out to do one year of the reboot just to clean up the end of the Roseanne show. Then we had to clean up the end of the reboot, it just kind of kept itself going. But I think for right now, it’s a good time for one just to kind of appreciate 37 years of knowing this family, and 15 of those years actually on air, this cast, that was a very, very big thing for them to face, the end of that era.”