Seven Questions with Vicki Lawrence of Mama's Family

[TJ]

We're back with another "Seven Questions" interview, and this time, it is one of the great legends of entertainment, Vicki Lawrence! Of course, sitcom fans know her most of all from her six season run on the series Mama's Family, which was a spinoff of a series of sketches from The Carol Burnett Show. But Lawrence is more than just Mama.

As the legend goes, she was discovered by Carol Burnett at the age of 17 and became part of the legendary series, The Carol Burnett Show, becoming the only cast member to remain on the series (besides Burnett herself, of course) for the entire run. In the midst of this success, she also managed to find herself with a brief (but memorable) musical career, as she was the woman behind the famous song "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" and other songs that made it big in other countries. After the end of The Carol Burnett Show, she moved to Hawaii along with her children and husband Alvin Schultz (to whom she is still married to this day), but that didn't last long as Los Angeles came calling again with a few guest roles and eventually the call to do the series Mama's Family, which ran for six seasons on NBC and in first-run syndication (one of the first successes in first run syndication) from 1982 until 1990.

She has also made game shows a significant part of her career, appearing on Match Game, Hollywood Squares, and many variations of Password and Pyramid, as well as hosting the NBC Daytime version of Win, Lose, or Draw in the late '80s. In the early '90s, she joined the leagues of Oprah, Geraldo, Donahue, and many others as she hosted her own daytime TV talk show Vicki! In more recent years, she has been seen with Miley Cyrus--not twerking, but playing her grandmother--on the Disney Channel series Hannah Montana and the voice of Flo in the animated video series Hermie and Friends. She is currently touring with her show "Vicki Lawrence and Mama: A Two Woman Show," where audiences get to see Mama in the 21st century.

Just in time for the release of StarVista Entertainment/Time Life's Mama's Family - The Complete Series on DVD, we got a chance to talk to Vicki Lawrence about. So let's get right to another installment of "Seven Questions!"

Read our interview here:
http://blog.sitcomsonline.com/2013/0...wrence-of.html