Carol Burnett and Jean Smart on <i>Hacks</i>, Surviving Hollywood, and Laughing Through Everything

Two comedic legends have a run-in on the fourth episode of Hacks season 4, when Deborah (Jean Smart) encounters Carol Burnett in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. When Deborah tells Burnett she’s idolized her since she was a little girl, she replies, “That’s sweet. Pointed because you’re highlighting our age difference, but it’s sweet.”

Getting Burnett, who turns 92 this week, to play herself in the episode was the thrill of a lifetime for Smart, who, like her character, has always adored the star of The Carol Burnett Show. Burnett herself was very excited to be part of Hacks, which won the 2024 Emmy for best comedy series. And with parts on Palm Royale and Better Call Saul, the veteran actress continues to break new ground in her career.

What started as a joint interview between Smart and Burnett for ELLE.com turned into something much better—a dizzyingly funny, warm, and open conversation about the greatest moments of The Carol Burnett Show, finding magic in one’s co-stars, and surviving a life in Hollywood.

Carol Burnett with Carol Channing in a special episode of The Carol Burnett Show.

Carol Burnett: I think we met way, way, way, way back when my daughter and I had written a play called Hollywood Arms. We had a table read with Hal Prince who was directing, and I remember we wanted Jean to play Louise, but, Jean, I think you wanted to be in California or something.

Jean Smart: I don’t remember why, and it’s always been one of my biggest regrets.

CB: Another time where I just absolutely got hysterical was when you were in Man Who Came to Dinner [on Broadway] with Nathan [Lane]. You always were just the best. When we were [guest-starring on] Hot in Cleveland, I played your mother in an episode.

JS: We’ve definitely got to finally get together again and do something a little more substantial.

CB: It was such fun to be with you [on Hacks], even if it was a short time. I remember I got the lines, and then I said, “Why not tell the real truth of what happened with me when Carol Channing was on my show?” So that’s what I did. I remember you thought it was made-up, but it was a real story.

She was a lot of fun and so forth, and she never missed a performance of Hello, Dolly! She said it was all due to what she ate. She was on the show for the first time and after we taped, we would always take our guest stars to dinner at Chasen’s in Beverly Hills. She sat down and she ordered just a plate. She had a cooler with her. The waiter brought her a dish, and she reached into this cooler, picked out a slab of whale blubber, put it on her plate, and proceeded to eat it. My husband and I went, “Oh, my God. Okay.” She said, “No, it keeps me healthy.”

So she comes in Tuesday morning, I said, “Are you okay?” She said, “Well, I was in Las Vegas, and I had this frozen elk flown in, and Carol, it just didn’t agree with me.” I looked at her, and she said, “Now listen to me and pay attention, whenever you’re on the road, do not eat just any old frozen elk.” I said, ‘I promise.” I kept that promise to this day.

Jean Smart at the 2021 Emmys.

JS: I worked with her once. She guest-starred on a show I was doing, and gosh, she was funny. We had so much fun.

CB: It was such fun [to film Hacks.] Everybody there, the crew and all, was so great. Also, it was done at Television City, which was my old hunting ground [on The Carol Burnett Show].

JS: They are so nice, you don’t even have to be Carol Burnett for them to be that nice, but they were extra excited.

CB: Again, congratulations. You’re going to have to get a new mantelpiece. To put all these awards on.

JS: Oh, geez.

CB: You are so deserving of all the praise and accolades, Jean. It’s just wonderful.

Burnett with her show audience.

JS: Well, honey, my God, I mean, the fact that you wanted to be on the show, we were so flattered. I know the word “icon” is probably annoying and boring at this point, but you are, and you’re certainly one of my idols. You’re the perfect example of somebody who’s supremely talented, supremely famous, and also just supremely down-to-earth.

CB: Right now, you would be describing yourself. Anyway, what season is this for Hacks?

JS: Hopefully we start season 5 in September. I can’t believe it. I now can smell the barn, and not necessarily in a good way. I’m sure you felt that way when you did your show and it ends, you just think, “Oh, my God, this is actually going to be over.” It’s going to be very sad and very strange.

CB: It’s bittersweet. We did 11 seasons, and then CBS did want us to come back for a 12th season, but I pulled the plug. I missed Harvey [Korman] because he left at the fifth season, and then a lot of times I thought we’re repeating what we have already done. I didn’t want the network to start turning the lights off.

JS: “Last call for Carol Burnett.” You want to leave them wanting more a little bit.

CB: I didn’t know what I was going to do after that, but I did a lot of different stuff, and I’m still doing different stuff. I’m happy at this stage of my life.

Lucia Aniello, Carol Burnett, Paul W. Downs, Jean Smart, and Jen Statsky on the Hacks set.

JS: I have to ask about one physical bit you did, because I always just marveled at your physical clowning ability. I’d have killed myself if I did half of what you did. Somebody sent this to me and I laughed so hard. It’s you dressed as Norma Desmond, and you’re stumbling down your circular staircase, looking shell-shocked. You’ve got on a flapper-esque dress, with the long beads and everything. You firmly make it to the bottom of the steps, and you twirl the beads around, and they literally whiplash you, and you go straight down onto your tailbone. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I’m thinking, “My God, did she crack her tailbone?” Did that hurt?

CB: I taught myself how to do the physical stuff. It was way back a hundred years ago when I was doing The Garry Moore Show. I was in my 20s and also doing Once Upon a Mattress.

I remember doing a sketch that Neil Simon wrote, he was a junior writer on the Gary Moore Show. Doc Simon was his nickname. He wrote a sketch called “Playhouse 90 Seconds.” The scene is in a hospital room. Durward Kirby is in bed, his head is all bandaged, and I walk in and say, “Oh, Jack, how are you feeling?” He said, “Not too great, Jill,” and I said, “Jack, why’d you have to go up the hill?” And he said, “I had to go up to fetch a pail of water, and then I fell down,” and I said, “I know you broke your crown.” Gary comes in as the doctor and says, “So Jill, what are you going to do?” My line was, “Well, I guess I’ll go tumbling after.” Then I was supposed to dive out of a window.

JS: Oh, my God.

Burnett with Harvey Korman.

CB: But what we did in the rehearsal was just talk about it because we weren’t on the set. We get on the set, and we’re blocking it, and the producer came up to me. I was 20 something and I wanted to keep the job. He said, “Are you sure you know how to jump out of a window?” I said, “Sure. Of course.” I had no idea what to do. I jumped out and I landed on a mattress. Now this is how stupid I was, I sat up and said to everybody, “Hey, thanks so much for the mattress.” I didn’t even think to look at what the hell I was going to land on. I went out kind of head first, and I landed on all fours.

I never really hurt myself, thank God. I remember when we were doing the Gone With the Wind sketch, and I got knocked down those stairs three times. In the dress rehearsal in front of an audience, I was knocked down three more, and then three in the aired show. I fell down those stairs nine times.

I didn’t hurt myself because I’ve realized that you can’t stiffen up, you have to be very loose when you do that so that you don’t break anything. In 11 years maybe I got a bruise or something, but I never sprained anything.

JS: Well, see, now I wish we could have written a trap fall for you [on Hacks].

CB: Oh, no, no, no. I’m too old for that now.

JS: I think the last time I saw you before Hacks was at Tim Conway’s memorial service.

Burnett on set with Jack Gilford.

CB: Now, there was a person who could do [stunts]. He was a tumbler in college. I remember watching him fall down some stairs as the old man [character] that he would do. He did same thing that I taught myself to do, go very slowly, almost in slow motion.

JS: It’s even funnier that way.

CB: When I discovered Vicki Lawrence, actually she had written me a fan letter. We were going to start the [Carol Burnett Show] in the fall of ‘67. That January before, I got this fan letter from a 17-year-old high school girl. I liked the letter. She said that everybody says that she reminds them of me as a younger person, and then enclosed a newspaper article with her picture in it and it said she was going to be in a contest called Miss Fireball of Inglewood.

I looked at that [and thought], “Wow. She looks much [more] like me at 17 than I did.” We were planning on doing a sketch where Harvey and I were a married couple raising my kid sister and I thought she might be good. I looked at the date of the Miss Fireball contest, it was going to be that very night. Now my husband’s coming downstairs, and I said, “Don’t get too comfortable. We’re going to go see the Fireball contest.”

Burnett with Tim Conway.

She won the contest. She played the guitar, sang, did a few jokes. We were backstage and I said, “We’re going to be starting this variety show in the fall. I’d like you to come and audition.” She was pretty raw, but there was something there, and we hired her.

Burnett and Vicki Lawrence.

JS: It’s like every girl’s fantasy. Jesus.

CB: She started out playing my kid sister and wound up playing my mother.

JS: That’s so weird, because people always told my sister, Georgia, that she so reminded them of you. She looked like you, she acted like you. I showed you a picture, and you said, “Oh, my goodness. Yes, definitely a family resemblance there.” People told her that they heard you were looking for someone to be on the show as a daughter, and they said, “You need to try to do that,” but that was fantasy land for us.

CB: Vicki was very shy, so we only used her a little bit in those sketches. Then Harvey took her under his wing, and he taught her accents, he taught her how to really listen, and how to work with props. She was like a little sponge, she absorbed everything, and she winds up at 24 years old playing my mother. It was bizarre. In Palm Royale she plays my mother again on the upcoming season. She plays this ancient agent with a Swedish accent.

Lucille Ball, Burnett, and Zero Mostel.

JS: I’m so jealous. I would’ve done it.

CB: They put old age makeup on her, and she, again, walks away with every scene she’s in. I was just so proud of her.

JS: You two were obviously meant to be.

CB: Isn’t it wonderful when you have co-actors that you’re working with that you love anyway?

JS: That’s how I feel about Hannah [Einbinder], we clicked from the minute we met. Just as a human being, I adore her.

CB: We’re so lucky.

JS: To be able to do what we love doing and make people laugh, and be able to pay our bills from doing it.

Smart with Einbinder.

CB: Somebody asked me, “What’s your legacy?” I say, “Well, maybe I was able to make somebody laugh when they needed it. Or smile when they needed it.”

I never had any kinks or problems, I just lucked out. When I was in college somebody sponsored me and gave me money that I could go to New York. It took a while, but things just kind of happened. There was one time I was up for a commercial. It was between me and another girl, and I really thought I had it, and I didn’t. She got it, but what saved me is that what came to me was, it’s her turn. It’s not my turn. My turn will come. So, I wasn’t disappointed.

JS: The hard part is when you know people personally, and they’re talented, and they just aren’t getting a break. I had a friend who, when he was 40 was still subletting people’s apartments with a bicycle in the living room and going down to the union every day to look for auditions, and had never gotten married. I think he just kind of woke up one day and thought, ‘What the hell have I done?’ You think, ‘Should those people have just kept thinking okay, any day now, any day now, any day now?’ It’s so hard to know because it’s so painful when you see people who are really talented going through that.

CB: I remember when I first got into UCLA, the head of the theater arts department gave us all a little talk and said, “Give yourself five years to work at it, then go onto something else.” Maybe you have to have the fire in the belly and keep going.

JS: I don’t know how I would’ve done if I’d gotten lots of rejection. I don’t think I would have handled that well. I always got a lot of positive reinforcement. That was one of the things that always sustained me. I don’t know if I would’ve been one of those people who said, “Oh, well, they’re wrong. I just need a chance to show what I can do.” I don’t know if I could have done that. It’s a hard business, very hard on some people.

CB: I was very lucky.

JS: I’ve been extraordinarily lucky too. I don’t know why, but I have. Especially at my age.

CB: You know what? Accept it with grace. I’m pushing 92, and I was just so happy when I got a chance to do Better Call Saul. I was friends with Vince Gilligan, who created it along with Breaking Bad. I loved Better Call Saul, I was hooked on it, and he said, “Would you [do it], if I write [you] a part?” I said, “Absolutely. I don’t care if I just have one line.” I went to Albuquerque and had the best time. They were so great. Bob Odenkirk was a doll.

Burnett with Ricky Martin in Palm Royale.

That kind of gave me my job on Palm Royale. It kind of opened up stuff at this age. My husband and I would go out to dinner and a lot of times people would come up and say, “Oh, you were that lady on Better Call Saul.” They had no idea I’d done a variety show. I had fun on Palm Royale working with all of those wonderful ladies. Kristen Wiig. Allison Janney. Laura Dern.

JS: I don’t know Laura [personally].

CB: Oh, she is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. They’re all wonderful, and Ricky Martin, what a doll he is. I made a list of all the people I’ve worked with, and it came to over 400. There were people outside of my show, but on my show, 11 years, I had two, and sometimes three guest stars, so that padded out over 400 people that I’ve had the good fortune to get in the sandbox with.

This interview has been edited and condensed.