Listen Again: Julia Gets Wise with Carol Burnett
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What is the significance of laughter in our lives?
How much fun is it to laugh? I think laughing is just the greatest little gift from the gods. I don't know if you have this, but I have certain people in my life that I laugh so hard with that I cry. There is nothing better. And, you know, I mean, it's not like you can exactly wake up and say, I'm going to laugh my ass off uncontrollably today. You know, the kind of deep soul rocking laughter. You can't plan it. It kind of sneaks up on you. And it can be very surprising. Yeah. You know, the laughing at a funeral kind of laughing, you know, you're not allowed to laugh, makes it worse. It's a mysterious and it's a truly wonderful thing. As a performer, there's this weird sense playing a comic scene sometimes. It's like you're several people all at once.
You're deeply into the scene, yes, but you're also in your head sort of controlling the scene and then you're also outside of it watching the scene. And when it's a comedy and it's going really well, at least for me, that deep kind of laughter can just bubble up and God damn it, it is impossible for me to stop it. I'd crack up. I'd lose it. I mean, if you've ever seen any of those blooper reels that they have online from Veep or Seinfeld, my contribution is ruining scene after scene with hysterical laughter. And I have to say, sometimes it's horrendous because you can see the other actors not believing that I have just ruined another take. You can see them getting a tad irritated with me, which I guess is understandable.
There's one scene, though... on Seinfeld where the great, and I do mean the great, Jerry Stiller, who played George's father, of course, he and I are having a kind of a confrontation, and he says, what the hell does that mean? And the way he said it, I just lost it.
My George isn't clever enough to hatch a scheme like this.
You got that right.
What the hell does that mean?
What the hell?
Come on. Okay, let's go. Let's go. I mean, I never got through it. We did like a million takes. There was never one in which I didn't weep with laughter or at the very least I was, you know, whimpering uncontrollably. I had to turn my head away from camera. I was digging fingernails into my palms. I never got it together. I can't tell you how much fun that was. It's just inexpressible. And it really only happens when things are singing, you know? It's the expression of joy at being on a team that is hitting every fucking shot. That's really the best part, the team part. I'm not a religious person, but if there's a heaven, please let it be that. Please, please. Total, deep, uncontrollable laughter with a great team, with great friends.
As I sit here right now, I am so grateful to think that there is gonna be another time, maybe even today, when I am laughing so hard that I can't control it. Because, you know, Jesus, that's just, that's what it's all about. How wonderful, how delightful, how right it is then that for the last episode of this season of Wiser Than Me, today, I get to talk to Carol Burnett.
Hi, I'm Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and this is Wiser Than Me, the podcast where I get schooled by women who are wiser than me. Okay, this is it. Today, I am talking to Carol Burnett. So I'm already crying. It's true. I love you so much. There's just absolutely nobody like Carol. Nobody. There is no way to even measure what she has meant to television comedy, much less what she has meant to women in television comedy, and much less what she has meant to me in television comedy. Side note, everything. Everything. She's done it all from starring on Broadway nearly seven decades ago in Once Upon a Mattress to her seminal variety show, The Carol Burnett Show, that was a mega super hit. I've got to get my shit together. I'm falling apart. That was...
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