PALM ROYALE Star Carol Burnett is HARPER’S BAZAAR’s March 2024 Digital Cover Story

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PALM ROYALE star Carol Burnett is HARPER’S BAZAAR’s March 2024 digital cover story photographed by Yelena Yemchuk and styled by Deborah Afshani.

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On taking the time to enjoy life: “I want to have fun,” she says with a shrug, sitting next to me on a cream couch and looking and sounding well rested, clear voiced, even peppy. “It’s not like I have to be busy all the time!”

On signing onto the Apple TV series, Palm Royale, starring Kristien Wiig, Allison Janney, and Laura Dern: “I said yes before I knew what I was going to do,” Burnett says.

On her perpetual energy: Burnett waves off questions about “having the energy.” “I was always very active, even as a kid,” she says. She tells a story about how she and her childhood friends used to climb the original Hollywood Sign. “The Os were my favorite,” Burnett remembers.

On whether she thinks being funny requires one to have endured past trauma: She was not funny because she was traumatized; she was funny because she loved the movies. “I think it was the fact that I went to the movies so much that. I always had a Mickey and Judy idea of ‘Everything’s going to work out.’ You’re going to put on a show in the barn, and then it’ll go to Broadway.”

On never having imposter syndrome: “It never occurred to me,” she says. “I always felt I was going to be able to do something.”

On opening her long-running variety show, The Carol Burnett Show, with a Q&A in lieu of a traditional monologue: “It was my producer’s idea,” Burnett recalls. “I balked at first. I said, ‘What if they don’t ask anything? Or what if they do and I can’t answer it?’ And he said, ‘Well, we’ll put some plants in the audience.’ And then I thought about it, and I said, ‘No, it’s got to be real.’”

“I started to get comfortable,” she says, “and it turned out to be one of my favorite things that we ever did.”

 Actor Kristen Wiig on Burnett’s influence on her and endearing personality: “She influenced me so much when I was younger, with her show and her characters. It always looked like she was having fun, and I always remembered that.”

“She is warm and kind, and everyone on our show—cast, crew, everyone! — fell in love with her.”

Palm Royale creator Abe Sylvia, on his nervousness to approach Burnett to talk about the role: “I remember psyching myself up for the call,” he says. “I didn’t want her ferreting out my impostor syndrome. When she jumped on the line, greeting me with a ‘Hi there, it’s Carol’ in that unmistakable singsong, I was put immediately at ease, as if we had known each other for years. I was struck by the generosity of this.”

[Photo Credit: Yelena Yemchuk for Harper’s Bazaar Magazine]

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