Carol Burnett gave fans a peek behind the curtain into what it was like being friends with TV legend Lucille Ball on the Jan. 14 episode of Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson‘s IMO Podcast, including her very last memory of the I Love Lucy star.
“She was great. She she always sent me flowers on my birthday,” Burnett, 92, remembered. “And I got up one morning, and she had died on my birthday. And I got flowers that afternoon [that said] ‘Happy birthday, kid.'” Obama and Robinson both gasped at the touching story.
Burnett eplained that her relationship with her “mentor” began when the icon was in the audience during a performance of Once Upon a Mattress on Broadway, in which Burnett played Princess Winnifred. “She came to see the second night,” recalled the Palm Royale star. “I was more nervous than I was opening night with all the critics. I peeked through the curtain and I saw this orange hair.”
She was even more surprised when Ball showed up to her dressing room to introduce herself. “She knocks on the door and I open the door, she says ‘Hiya, kid. She was 22 years older, so I’m kid.”
Burnett said she and Ball chatted for 20 minutes, and then Ball made her an extremely kind offer. “She said, ‘Kid, if you ever need me for anything, you call me.'” The call finally came three years later when Burnett was working on a special for NBC and needed a high-profile guest.
“Got her on the phone. She said, ‘Hey kid, you’re doing great. What’s happening?’ And I blubbered about it a little,” Burnett remembered. “And she interrupted me. She said, ‘When do you want me?’ So we did it… And we had the best time.”
Ball died on April 26, 1989, at the age of 77 from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm one week after emergency heart surgery.
