“Carol Burnett was sort of a Saturday night must,” said White, who is turning 99 on Sunday. “You couldn’t not watch The Carol Burnett Show.” White then explained Burnett called her and asked her to be on the show. And she was elated to have the opportunity.

“Carol’s comedic style is — there’s such a sense of fun in there,” she added. “You get the feeling that she’s enjoying it maybe just as much, if not more, than you are. And that’s saying something.”

White went on to say that Burnett has endured her “fair share of tragedy” during her life.

“You were seeing a different Carol,” White said of Burnett’s more serious work. “Then, through her later life with the problems she had. The pain — you felt the pain because you loved her. Writing this show with her daughter and then losing her daughter so close.”

Burnett’s daughter Carrie Hamilton was open about dealing with drug addiction in her teens. Once she got sober, she became very close to her mother, but she sadly died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 38.

“Once in awhile, Carol and I had lunch together,” White continued. “Once again, it’s what you don’t say that means more than what you do say. … When you see each other, you just hold a little tighter and try to be business as usual.”

Burnett has previously talked about how she dealt with losing her daughter.

“You don’t get over it, but you cope,” she said. “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.”