Carol Burnett Says Late Daughter Carrie Gave Her a 'Sign' Before Opening the Play They Wrote Together

Tony Esparza/CBS/getty Carol Burnett and Carrie Hamilton

Carol Burnett says she felt her late daughter Carrie Hamilton's presence on the night she opened their play Hollywood Arms.

On the latest episode of the Dear Multi-Hyphenate podcast, Burnett recalled a touching memory about Carrie, who died in 2002 of lung cancer.

Host Michael Kushner asked the 89-year-old comedian if she had any stories to share about working on Hollywood Arms — a play adapted from Burnett's memoir One More Time — with famed theater director Hal Prince, who died in 2019.

Burnett told him that Prince was enormously supportive while she and her daughter wrote the show, which opened at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago about three months after Carrie's death. It transferred to Broadway that same year, but Carrie would never see her work fully realized on stage.

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"Carrie passed away and I... Well, I'm her mom, and I didn't want to get out of bed," the actress recalled. "And my husband — [the show was] going into previews — said, 'Carol, you owe this not only to Carrie but you owe it to Hal to finish.' "

Soon after, Burnett and her husband, Brian Miller, flew to Chicago for the previews. "We're on the plane, my husband and I, to Chicago, and I said a little prayer to Carrie," she told Kushner. "I said, 'I'm going to be doing this but I don't want to be alone. Be with me. Somehow be with me. I need a sign you're going be with me even though you're not present physically.' "

Jon Kopaloff/Getty Carol Burnett

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When Burnett arrived at her hotel in Chicago, there was a huge bouquet of birds-of-paradise flowers from Prince. "[Carrie] had a bird of paradise tattooed on her right shoulder. I called Hal and said, How did you know?' " she remembered. " 'That was Carrie's favorite flower.' And he said, 'I didn't. I just called down and said send up something exotic to Carol's room.' "

The next day, Burnett, Miller and Prince went to dinner after rehearsal. "The ma?tre d' brought over a bottle of champagne, compliments of the management, and on the label it said, 'Louise,' " the six-time Emmy-winning actress said. "That was Carrie's middle name and my mother's name."

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The last sign was rain on opening night. "Carrie and I always loved rain… and opening night, it rained," Burnett said. "So, I don't know... a coincidence perhaps? But three things and I just felt... I felt her."

Carrie died from pneumonia, a complication from lung cancer that spread to her brain.

Burnett previously spoke about her daughter in a 2018 interview with PEOPLE, saying, "I think of her every day."

"She never leaves me," the comedian said. "I just feel her."

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Burnett said losing her daughter is not something she'll ever get over.

"You don't get over it, but you cope," she said at the time. "What else can you do? When Carrie died, I didn't want to get out of bed for a while, but I had a play to finish that we started that Hal Prince was going to direct. I owed it to Carrie, and I owed it to Hal."

Last month, the actress began to lead the charge to have Broadway's Majestic Theatre be renamed the Harold Prince Theatre. "Please join me in this labor of love to have the Majestic Theatre renamed the Harold Prince Theatre. Post a video saying 'The Majestic is fit for a Prince' (with the caption #themajesticisfitforaprince) and I will repost it," she wrote on Instagram. "Together we can make this a reality!"