That Time Carol Burnett Kept Acting Through an Earthquake

If you grew up watching The Carol Burnett Show then you know it was practically a sport trying to guess when the actors might break character on the show. It’s one of the reasons we loved watching! The fact that they were genuinely funny to each other made every episode that much funnier to witness. Tim Conway was very well known to break a lot of the other actors in his scenes with them. It’s amazing they ever got any work done with him around. But, in 1974 an incident happened that broke most of the people in the scene- and yet Burnett herself kept cool as a cucumber.

Her guest stars this 1974 episode were the Jackson 5 and she kept going through the skit despite an earthquake shaking the set and scaring the actors! She even ad-libbed in a way that made sense both to the skit and to the earthquake that had just happened. This was filmed at CBS Television City’s Studio 33 in Los Angeles so they had their share of earthquakes. Perhaps she was used to it by then. But, it was not a small one as you can see the cameras shaking and see the uneasiness on the Jackson brothers’ faces.

In her book In Such Good Company (2016), Burnett talked about how she always wanted to keep going no matter what happened. She also tried to keep costume changes lightning fast so that there would be no interruptions. Sticking to the character through an earthquake was apparently also part of the gig!

Watch the master keep her cool during an earthquake in the video below!