Mark Bracco and Linda Gierahn (‘Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love’): ‘The memory she has of everything she’s done is remarkable’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
Mark Bracco and Linda Gierahn are honored to have become the go-to team when it comes to honoring Carol Burnett. They served as producers on a “Carol Burnett Show” 50th anniversary special in 2017, and they were looking over the calendar when it struck them that the comedy legend was going to be turning 90 in 2023. So they reached out to Burnett’s manager Steve Sauer about putting together a special honoring her milestone birthday – “and she loved the idea,” Bracco says. “And there was a comfort level with us having worked together before.” Thus was planted the seed for what became “Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love,” an NBC retrospective special on which Bracco and Gierahn served as executive producers through Silent House Productions. “What was great about this,” Bracco notes, “was that we didn’t have to focus exclusively on ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ but really got to focus on the entire breadth of her career.” See the exclusive video interview above.
That career breadth spans Burnett’s start on Broadway starring in “Once Upon a Mattress,” through her work in the early days of television, then to her long-running iconic CBS comedy variety hour, through a movie career that included a memorable turn in the 1982 feature “Annie.” “I loved going back to the old days before ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ and diving into her Broadway TV specials, her singing, her stage work, all of that,” Gierahn says.
The birthday special originally aired over NBC on April 26 and was a star-studded affair that included Allison Janney. Bernadette Peters, Amy Poehler, her longtime pal Julie Andrews, Cher, Steve Carell, Bill Hader, Billy Porter, Lily Tomlin, Taraji P. Henson, Katy Perry, Marisa Tomei and a few dozen others. And Bracco confirms that it was not difficult to attract participants. “In a lot of ways, it was the easiest show we ever booked,” he says. “With this, is wasn’t only a “yes’ from people, it was, ‘What can I do? I want to sing.’ It resulted in this expression of so much love in the room. Everyone wanted to make Carol happy, either sing for her or make her laugh. They all wanted to be there to participate in a great and joyous way.”
Gierahn agrees, “The whole night was just filled with such joy and emotion. People were laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe, and the next second they were crying. It was a rollercoaster the whole night.”
And it wasn’t a case of Burnett simply sitting back and enjoying her birthday celebration. She proved to be an especially active, hands-on producer of the event. “We were sending edits of the retrospective packages to Carol to look at, and she was coming back with incredible notes,” Bracco says, “along with stuff like, ‘Are you sure that’s 1972 and not 1973?’ And most of the time, she was right. She was just very very involved. And once we got on-site and we were rehearsing, she was very much a part of the process. She really enjoyed that we weren’t putting on a birthday party. We were putting on a variety show for her. I think that made her really happy and made her want to be a part of it.”
It also greatly impressed both Bracco and Gierahn that Burnett’s memory remains sharp as a tack. “She remembers everything,” Bracco maintains. “I mean, the memory she has of everything she’s done is remarkable. Especially when it came to clips from ‘The Carol Burnett Show,’ her knowledge was invaluable. She knows better than anyone what’s going to get the biggest laughs.” That encyclopedic mastery blew Gierahn away. As she says, “She remembers back to every single clip, every special, she remembers it all. I have no idea how she does it, but she does.”
“Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love” can be seen streaming on Peacock.
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