A few serious minutes with Carol Burnett

Carol Burnett makes her Seattle stage debut this month with a career retrospective that is more of a conversation with video clips than a show. Warm, unpretentious and easily amused at showbiz follies, she seems unflaggingly energetic at 76. And the six-time Emmy winner was nominated for a seventh this year, for her guest appearance on "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit."

Speaking by phone from Los Angeles, she discussed the evolution of "Laughter and Reflection," which grew out of her Emmy-winning television show (1967-'78), which she always began with a question-and-answer session.

Q: How long have you been inviting the audience to be co-creators on your stage show?

A: Oh gosh, I think probably close to 15 to 20 years. But I don't do them that often. It's not like I go on the road every year for weeks and weeks. This time I'm doing four, and I do maybe four to six a year. It keeps the old gray matter ticking when you just call on somebody at random in the audience and you don't know what they're going to ask or say. The evening goes quickly, if the audience is with it, and I'm with it.

Q: My first memories of you are from "The Garry Moore Show," especially a skit where you played this seemingly harmless mother who served poisonous toadstools to her family. When they all dropped dead, you said you were just tired of being so nice. That seemed pretty outrageous for network television back then. Was it difficult to pull off?

A: That was a takeoff on an Irene Dunne movie ["I Remember Mama"]. Garry's show was very popular, and we had wonderful writers — Neil Simon was the junior writer on Garry's show — and everybody loved Garry and they knew he wasn't out to offend anybody.

Q: Some of your movie spoofs are so close to the original, I don't know how to watch the originals anymore. "Mildred Fierce," for instance.

A: After that aired, I got a call from Joan Crawford, and she said, and I'll bleep what she said, "You gave us more bleeping production [values] than that bleeping Jack Warner ever did."

Q: What was it about you and Julie Andrews that made you connect on "Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall" and its two sequels? In Andrews' memoir, "Home," she says "we are chums; we probably were in a past life, as well."

A: Even though we were born miles and miles apart, we both had dysfunctional — of course, what is functional? — families with similarities. When we met [over a Chinese dinner that was kind of a "blind date"arranged by friends who thought they'd hit it off] it was like we'd known each other forever.

Q: Will there be another Julie and Carol special?

A: We'd like to do something that would include a retrospective of the three shows, and then have us sit around and talk with the audience and tell stories that were behind the show.

Q: You're still making movies. "Post Grad" was released last month. What else keeps you busy?

A: I've written a book, "Laughter and Reflection," that's going to be published in April by Random House. It's a collection of anecdotes, inspired by these evenings, and I talk about my daughter, Carrie, who passed away of cancer, and I talk about how we got together to write a play that Hal Prince directed and got to Broadway.

Q: Occasionally you've done serious roles, like "Friendly Fire," the 1979 TV movie that has so many similarities to the Pat Tillman story. Would you take on that kind of role now?

A: Nobody has sent me a script. "Law and Order" was serious, and I enjoy doing drama on film. For comedy, though, I kinda need an audience, rather than just a camera looking at me.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com