Carol Burnett's years-long love for All My Children lent itself to one of the soap's most memorable characters, Verla Grubbs, the daughter of Langley Wallingford and stepdaughter of grand dame Phoebe Tyler Wallingford.
Burnett made her first appearance on the ABC soap way back in 1983 and played Verla off and on until AMC left the airwaves in 2011. On March 25, she sat down with two other AMC alumni, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, and reminisced about her love for the show and her time as Verla.
Burnett, Ripa, and Consuelos even worked together back in 1995 during one of the comedienne's Pine Valley stints. At the time, Ripa played Hayley Vaughan, and Conseulos played Mateo Santos.
During her morning show chat, Burnett told the former AMC pair that her kids were the ones who fomented her love the show.
"They would watch, you know, at noon. I said, 'What are you guys doing?' I sat down, and I started to watch, and I got hooked!" she said.
She became so enamored by the goings-on in Pine Valley that she let it affect a family vacation before soaps could be watched on demand or even on videotape.
"I said, 'How am I going to last if I don't know what's going on in Pine Valley?'" Burnett said before explaining how she ultimately solved the problem. She had a friend send her telegrams with updates each week. Unfortunately, a concierge who received one of the telegrams in Lake Como was alarmed by the message.
"We went to bed, there was a knock at the door around two o'clock in the morning," Burnett relayed. "We opened the door, and it was the manager of the hotel, and he was shaking. He had this telegram. I wrote down what the telegram said: 'Erica is still in a coma. Mark slipped again and ran away from rehab. Mona has to have exploratory surgery -- doesn't look good. Chuck has learned that Donna, who's carrying his baby, was once a hooker. Hope you're having a great trip."
A message like that could alarm anyone, but at least it was all fiction -- and Burnett got her soap update fix.
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