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Carol Burnett has claimed that CBS only gave her “one note” during the 11-year run of her eponymous comedy series.
The 92-year-old comedian hosted The Carol Burnett Show on CBS from 1967 to 1978, alongside a core ensemble cast, including Vicki Lawrence, Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, and Lyle Waggoner.
During Tuesday’s episode of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, Burnett reflected on her 11 years with the network, which has been in a period of turmoil since Bari Weiss was appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News in October. Her tenure has been marked by plummeting staff morale and heavy scrutiny over her editorial decision-making.
“CBS left us alone,” Burnett said of the show, which had a 28-piece orchestra and up to 70 costumes per week.
“There was one note in 11 years,” Burnett told Poehler, recalling how CBS approached her about a sketch she did when she was a nudist.
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Carol Burnett says CBS ‘left us alone’ when she was working on ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ (Good Hang with Amy Poehler)
“I’m behind the fence that says, ‘Keep out,’ and I’m hanging over the fence bare-shouldered, and then my legs are bare with high-top tennis shoes and Harvey’s voiceover,” she recalled. “He’s interviewing me, and it’s a bunch of jokes about the nudist colony. No big deal.”
According to Burnett, the sketch continued with her character talking about having dances every Saturday night, and doing them “very carefully.” However, it was that line that CBS took issue with, Burnett claimed.
“The network said, ‘That was too blue. You have to change that line,’” she recalled. Poehler quipped that sometimes the changes to a line are “even dirtier,” and Burnett confirmed that was the case.
She recited the new line her character delivered in response to a question about how she did the dances at the nudist colony: “Cheek to cheek.”
“They left, and they were like, ‘That’s good,’” Burnett added, referring to CBS’s response to the line change.
Burnett’s remarks come as Weiss has faced intense backlash over her decisions at CBS, including the last-minute cancellation of a 60 Minutes segment about Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration to the violent El Salvadorian prison CECOT in December. The segment eventually aired on CBS in January, after already airing in Canada on the Global Television Network.
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Burnett, who has an honorary Golden Globe Award named after her, appeared on her eponymous comedy show for 11 years (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
Weiss has also come under fire for the “MAGA-coded” reboot of CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil, which has been beset with poor ratings, technical mishaps, behind-the-scenes chaos, and cringeworthy pro-Trump segments.
In the fall, there was a 10 percent payroll cut by David Ellison, the boss of CBS’s parent company, Paramount. The move included letting roughly 1,000 CBS News employees go.
However, layoffs had been anticipated since chairman Ellison took over Paramount in August following its politically fraught $8 billion merger with Skydance Media. Amid the merger, several news programs shut down, including The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, which will air its final episode in May.
When Colbert’s show was canceled, CBS claimed the decision was not related to Paramount paying $16 million to settle a lawsuit with Trump over a 60 Minutes interview.