And you thought you were a diehard Golden Girls fan. During a Reddit AMA on Monday, Betty White—Rose herself—acknowledged that the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was such an ardent admirer of the Florida-set, late-80s sitcom, that she requested a live performance from the cast quartet, which included White’s co-stars Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty.
Apparently there is a circle of Golden Girls fans who have heard this story, because one Reddit user began the discussion, asking, “I understand that the Queen of England was so enamored by The Golden Girls that she requested you girls do a live show for her and the crew obliged? What was the plot and did you have to ‘tone down’ some of the jokes, particularly those by Rue McClanahan?”
While White did not comment on whether the Queen’s semi-private Golden Girls show was censored, she did recall a few other details about the performance:
White remembered more about the cast’s interaction with the Queen Mother when writing her 2010 memoir, Here We Go Again: My Life in Television:
What else is known about this show, which was part of the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium in 1988? A week before the performance, Bea Arthur told the Orlando Sentinel, “We’ll do about seven minutes from the show, but we’ll have to censor a few things for the queen.” According to another site, the cast “re-enacted two of their kitchen table scenes with a bit of censoring so as not to offend any royal sensibilities. One line that was left intact that surprised reviewers was Sophia’s interjection to Dorothy’s question to Blanche about how long she’d waited to have sex again after her husband had died. The 88-year-old Queen Mum was spotted in the Royal Box chuckling heartily at Sophia’s risqué response: ‘Until the paramedics came.’”
She was not the only member of the royal family who reportedly loved the Emmy-winning series. Last year, British comedy actress Cleo Rocos recalled how, back in the late 80s, she, Princess Diana, and Freddie Mercury would turn down the volume on Golden Girls reruns, drink champagne, and improvise “show dialogue with ‘much naughtier storyline lines.’”