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The Queen Mother Loved The Golden Girls So Much That She Requested a Live Performance from the Cast

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Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Beatrice Arthur in 2008.Courtesy of Todd Williamson/Getty Images.

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:

It was very exciting. The Queen was lovely. We were told not to address her unless we were addressed. She was up in a box and she came down on stage after with Princess Anne.

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:

[T]he ladies all dropped a small curtsy as she approached. I happened to be the last one in our foursome, and after she greeted Bea and Rue and Estelle, as she got to me, she indicated the scantily clad Rockettes behind us and said to me, “Aren’t they beautiful girls?” I curtsied, and replied, “Yes, and such lovely bodies.” She lit up with a radiant smile that belied her eighty-six years and replied, “Oh, yes. Lovely bawdies.”

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.’”