Whatever HAPPENED to FUN?

So much of COMEDY TODAY is about making the AUDIENCE CRINGE. CAROL BURNETT still BELIEVES it should make you FEEL GOOD.

- JULIEANNE SMOLINSKI

Before I sat down with Carol Burnett at the Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills, her assistant asked me to text over a photo of a negative Covid test. This would be a courtesy under normal interview circumstances, but Burnett was having a particularly big month and didn't want to throw a wrench into things by getting sick. She was up for an Emmy (for Outstanding Variety Special, for a show highlighting her long career; she won) and presenting one (for Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, which went to Quinta Brunson) and promoting a new TV show. In the upcoming Palm Royale, Kristen Wiig plays a social climber in 1960s Florida, and Burnett plays one of the many grandes dames trying to kick her back down the ladder.

My Covid test came up negative and I feel fine, but when I get to the suite I don't want to shake Burnett's hand, even when she greets me with her dazzling trademark smile. I can see the headline: "Living Legend Carol Burnett Gets Dangerous Germs From Idiot."

Did I mention Carol Burnett is 90? 

I have a lot of questions about the simple fact that at this age, she is still starring in television shows and giving out Emmys and shaking hands with strangers for press purposes, starting with the obvious: Why?

"I want to have fun," she says with a shrug, sitting next to me on a cream couch and looking and sounding well rested, clear voiced, even peppy. "It's not like I have to be busy all the time!" The peppiness, it should be noted, is unflagging on all biographical fronts, recent and not, from the "hypochondriacal Christian Scientist" grandmother who raised her to whether she's dealt with ageism as a nonagenarian. ("Not from my own personal experiences, no!") You'd forgive someone for saying that this preternatural optimism seems almost at odds with the world we know, even though it's one that continues to contain Carol Burnett.