For Harper’s Bazaar, Julieanne Smolinski interviews comedy legend Carol Burnett, age 90, about her current acting roles and doing live unscripted audience Q&A to open The Carol Burnett Show in the late ’60s and early ’70s. The bit was so successful that Burnett took it on the road for 20 years after the show ended.
The questions were never vetted, the audience members never preselected. Burnett would choose on the fly, usually just by picking people out and pointing aggressively at them. On one occasion, on The Carol Burnett Show, a woman asked if she could get onstage and sing a song. Burnett let her, lending the audience member her orchestra and even joining in herself, a few bars into “You Made Me Love You.” Rather than dying of gratitude, the woman laughingly complained that Burnett had “screwed it up” by failing to harmonize during the performance’s big finish. When Burnett tells this story, it’s not “What a bitch” but “What a delight.”
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