Legendary comedian Carol Burnett talked about some of the comedy that is available these days and admitted so much of it is “boring” and simply “not funny.”
Speaking on the “Variety’s Awards Circuit” podcast, the 91-year-old actress said that the shows she was part of like “The Carol Burnett Show” and others on the air at the time were “funny and character driven, they’re not scatological or blue,” Fox News reported.
“I’m not a prude, but sometimes I think some of the stuff today … it’s been kind of easy to get a laugh by being a little blue,” Burnett said. “I don’t mind if it’s within the character, but if they do it just to say a bad word, I think it’s boring, and it’s not funny.”
“Funny is ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show.’ Funny is Mary [Tyler Moore], Bob Newhart, ‘All in the Family’ – and they hold up today,’” she added.
Burnett — who found monster success with her variety show on CBS from 1967 to 1978, followed by nine episodes in the fall of 1991 — previously talked about how she misses the old comedy sketch entertainment shows and would love to see them make a comeback, Fox News noted.
“I’d like to see variety come back,” Burnett told the outlet. “But [the networks] could never do what we did because I think the cost would be extravagant now.”
Carol Burnett Weighs in on Today’s Comedyhttps://t.co/QIfAqzUHm5
— PJ Media (@PJMedia_com) August 13, 2024
“We had a 28-piece orchestra, 12 dancers,” she added. “We had 60 to 75 costumes a week. Bob Mackie designed for our guest stars. All of that you couldn’t do today. It would be too much. We did kind of a Broadway mini-musical comedy review every week. And that couldn’t be done today.”
“But there could be a hybrid of some way to do a variety show because there are people who could certainly do variety,” Burnett continued. “But I don’t think a network would take a chance. I just wish they would.”
WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI
The Hollywood star also reflected on her career and admitted that CBS executives initially discouraged her from doing the show how she wanted. She said a vice president at the network told her that variety was “a man’s game” reserved for the likes of then-stars like Jackie Gleason and Dean Martin.
“And [they] had a sitcom they wanted me to do, to which I said, ‘I don’t want to be the same person every week. I want variety, I want music, I want different characters to do,'” Burnett said.
“They had to put us on the air because I had a 10-year contract … I just said, ‘This is what I know, and this is what I want to do.’ I wasn’t deterred at all. I just simply said, ‘I want to have fun.’ And I pushed for that. They had to put it on the air.”
