NEED TO KNOW
Vicki Lawrence met future collaborator Carol Burnett after sending her a fan letter with a newspaper article about their resemblance
Burnett went on to attend a contest Lawrence participated in, following a hunch after reading the letter
Their time working together began in 1967 on The Carol Burnett Show, where Lawrence played her iconic “Mama” character
Vicki Lawrence is opening up about the twist of fate that led to meeting Carol Burnett.
Lawrence, who would go on to be a close collaborator of Burnett’s, recounted their first interaction during an appearance on the Wednesday, Sept. 16, episode of The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan, saying, “I used to enter everything — every contest that came around, I guess I was bored.”
“So this one came up… It was a fireman’s ball and they decided to call it a contest and maybe get some young girls to come out and dance and sing for them,” Lawrence, 77, added. “I was one of eight girls, and our newspaper gal did a big article about two weeks prior to the to the contest. In the newspaper, she said, I bore ‘a striking resemblance to a young Carol Brunette.’ And my mom said, ‘You need to write her a fan letter.’ “
At the time, Lawrence knew of Burnett but wasn’t a dedicated fan. However, she decided to give it a shot.
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Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence in a musical skit from ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ in September 1973
Credit: CBS Photo Archive/Getty
“So, I wrote her a fan letter. I just I told her I would like to meet her. Didn’t really ask for anything. ‘Everybody says I look like you,’ and I mailed it off to Carol,” she said, adding, “I put the newspaper article in so she could see that I wasn’t nuts.”
Lawrence continued: “And she managed to get the letter before the contest.”
Burnett’s then-secretary called the comedian into her office and said, “You need to read this fan letter.” Burnett took Lawrence’s father name out of the newspaper article, looked them up in the phone book, “and she called me after school,” she said.
The famed comedian went on to attend the contest, telling her husband, per Lawrence, “I have a hunch.”
She snuck in, sat at the back and even crowned Lawrence, who won the contest. A few months later, she got home from school, and her mom told her she heard Burnett had given birth.
Lawrence then went to the hospital, asking the nurses in the maternity ward if she could visit Burnett. The nurses, thinking she was Burnett’s sister, let her right in.
Their unique origin story led to a happy relationship between the two.
Their professional collaboration began in 1967, when Burnett’s sketch series The Carol Burnett Show premiered. Though Lawrence is 16 years younger, her most famous character was “Mama,” the mother of Burnett’s Eunice Harper Higgins.
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