GOLDEN GIRL
Carol Burnett’s sidekick finally ranks as a ‘Cool Kid’
VICKI Lawrence never felt she was part of the “in” crowd, despite getting her big break as a teenager on comedienne Carol Burnett’s 1967-78 variety show. But when Fox picked up her new sitcom, “The Cool Kids,” her former boss made sure to clarify her status. “I told her, ‘I’m a cool kid now,’ and she said, ‘Honey, you have always been a cool kid,’ ” Lawrence recently said by phone.
On the hit Friday night comedy, Lawrence plays Margaret, a sexagenarian who pours rum — not maple syrup — on breakfast pancakes, and horns her way into a fun-loving retirement home clique played by comedy stalwarts David Alan Grier, Martin Mull and Leslie Jordan. It’s her first starring series role since “Mama’s Family,” the 1980s Burnett show spinoff in which she played a cranky Southern matriarch. (Lawrence still dons the character’s gray wig, pearls and dowdy dress for her touring revue, “Vicki Lawrence & Mama: A Two-Woman Show.”)
Lawrence, 69, lives in Long Beach, Calif., with her husband, Al Schultz, a former makeup artist on Burnett’s variety show. She talked to The Post about those inevitable “Golden Girls” comparisons and her 35-mile drive to the 20th Century Fox lot. What’s most difficult about returning to a series?
Oh, the worst part is my commute on the 405. Traffic has gotten so much worse since the ’80s. Best time so far has been 55 minutes; worst time — two hours 10 minutes. I always said, “I will never be one of those idiots that does that every day.” Now I’m one of those idiots. [laughs] Is Margaret similar to Mama? Kind of, but I think Margaret would scare the crap out of Mama. My back story for Margaret is that maybe she was a “Banger Sister,” one of the gals that hung out with a band and has been to Vegas, been on the buses and been around a lot of stuff. She’s very horny, still. I’m sure Mama would think she’s totally a tramp. [laughs] Is “The Cool Kids” fairly compared to “The Golden Girls”? Well, I think it’s wonderful we’re embracing the older folks again; we haven’t done that really since “The Golden Girls.” Leslie Jordan says if we’re the Golden Girls, we’re the Golden Girls on crack. I play a lot of retirement communities, and they’re not geriatric. They’re 55 and older. They’re not slowing down; they’re sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. In a famous “The Carol Bur- nett Show” skit outtake, Tim Conway ad-libbed about two conjoined elephants. When it was time for you to speak, you said, “Are you sure that little a--hole’s through?” Then the rest of the cast loses it. Are you surprised you said that?
It was kind of the way I felt at that moment. We all loved Tim. That was the first time I’d ever thrown in a big ole ad-lib and cracked anybody up. I was learning my craft, and these people had been doing this for a long time. It really wasn’t until Mama came along that I started to earn the right to play with the grownups in the sandbox. Is there any one piece of advice Burnett gave you that still sticks?
Not really advice, but I learned by watching and by osmosis. You never worked for her; you worked with her. Has she told you what she thinks of “The Cool Kids”?
She e-mailed, “I love it. The chemistry between you and the guys is delicious. It really looks like you’re having fun and that’s what it’s all about.” I e-mailed back — now this will make me cry — that I think of her and Harvey [Korman] when someone says, “You are so funny.” He was such a mentor. I think of them every day and everything they taught me.