When you were working with Betty White, “you were working with a pro.” That’s according to veteran entertainer Bob Newhart, who spoke to PEOPLE just weeks before what would have been White’s 100th birthday.
Newhart, now 92, has worked with White on several projects, including his eponymous sitcom, Bob, and an appearance on the finale of her show, Hot in Cleveland.
Their interactions go back decades, with White serving as a guest on the Jack Paar Show in 1960, the same night Newhart made his first appearance on a late-night talk show.
According to Newhart, White was a natural actress.
“She was just amazing, from any standpoint,” Newhart told PEOPLE, adding that White was “great fun to have on the set. Everything was very light.”
In addition to keeping things light, White was good at her job, Newhart added: “She was such a pro. I mean, she’s been doing this, as I say, from the very beginning of television. People were [like], ‘Okay, now we have this thing. And what do we do with it?’ “
White, it turned out, knew just what to do — blending affability with a knack for comic timing that gave way to her hilarious turns on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the ’70s, The Golden Girls in the ’80s, and Hot in Cleveland in the 2010s.
According to Newhart, White’s acting chops were so great that she could even be convincing in the role of the conniving Sue Ann on the The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
“Sue Ann was so far away from Betty, and yet she pulled it off,” Newart said. “I mean, she did a great job … It shows you what a great actress she was, because it wasn’t her at all.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free weekly newsletter to get the biggest news of the week delivered to your inbox every Friday.
White’s legacy in the entertainment world, Newhart added, is her consummate professionalism.
“The young people starting out in the business, all they have to do is just be Betty White, and they got nothing to worry about,” he said. “The good ones make it look easy.”
“We are deeply saddened by the news of Betty White’s passing. We are honored that she recently chose to work with PEOPLE to celebrate her extraordinary life and career,” Dan Wakeford, PEOPLE’s editor in chief, said in a statement.
White died just two weeks before she would have celebrated her 100th birthday.
“Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever,” her agent and close friend Jeff Witjas told PEOPLE in a statement. “I will miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much. I don’t think Betty ever feared passing because she always wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again.”
