Candice Bergen Shares a Fiery Tale from Her Teenage Years

If someone asked how I was doing and casually inquired whether I’d lost weight, I might be a bit thrown off. And, if they then switched gears to ask about a sitcom star who almost set a restaurant ablaze in Switzerland? Honestly, I probably wouldn’t get it right at all.

After doing a bit of digging—from William Frawley and Larry Storch to Red Fox and even the beloved dog from “The Brady Bunch”—I finally landed on the answer…

It was the iconic Candice Bergen from “Murphy Brown.”

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Recently, Bergen made an appearance on Ted Danson’s podcast, famed for its memorable catchphrase, where he asked her to recount the incident of nearly igniting a restaurant’s fire.

Seriously, hats off to Ted; he clearly knows how to mine for entertaining stories.

“It wasn’t just any eatery; it was the finest restaurant,” Bergen recollected. “Olden in Gstaad, right where my school was located.”

Wait, so it wasn’t even some rundown joint? Come on, Candice!

“I snuck out,” she shared. “I was only 14 and not allowed out at night, so I had to be sneaky.”

During her escapade, she found herself enjoying meat fondue and sipping wine with older girls—something totally common in Switzerland at that age.

“I thought, ‘Let’s spice things up a bit. How about a splash of wine in the oil?’” Bergen recalled. “Next thing I knew, flames shot up to the ceiling, and we had to bail out while it was snowing outside.”

This sounds like a classic tale of teenage mischief, right? You know how it goes—one person’s story spirals into another, and suddenly it’s like, “Oh yeah, I nearly burned down a fancy Swiss restaurant!”

Fast forward a few years, Bergen returned to the area and was greeted by someone who recognized her. “Aren’t you the woman who burned down Olden?” he asked her. She couldn’t help but say, “Yes, that was me.” And just like that, the legend lived on.

What a fantastic anecdote! Honestly, it was such an engaging interview, and this was also the episode where Bergen mentioned her past relationships with Donald Trump and Henry Kissinger.