Carol Burnett is an iconic actress and former star of The Carol Burnett Show. She's also a grandmother to 14-year-old Dylan, the son of her daughter, Erin Hamilton.
Carol and her husband recently filed a request for guardianship of Dylan as Erin wrestles with ongoing substance abuse issues. Carol released a statement explaining their decision:
“Due to addiction issues and other circumstances that my daughter, Erin, has been struggling with impacting her immediate family dynamic, my husband and I have petitioned the court to be appointed legal guardian of my 14-year-old grandson. Guardianship will be for oversight purposes concerning his health, education, and welfare and not intended to deny him nor the parents proper visitation with one another. We look forward to recovery being the next stepping stone towards normalization and ask for privacy at this time to allow that process to occur.”
While the family is probably experiencing a lot of tension about the decision, it sounds as if Carol and her husband have Erin’s consent.
In the filing, Carol's legal team notes that this is a long-term issue for Erin:
"Throughout her adult life, and since Dylan's birth, Erin has suffered from severe substance abuse and addiction issues. In the past 19 years, Erin has been in and out of rehabilitation centers and has been institutionalized a total of eight times for a minimum of 30 days each time."
Erin also attempted suicide in July of this year. Unfortunately, Dylan's father is also unable to care for him as he is currently in rehab.
The filing notes that this isn't the first time the family has been concerned about Dylan:
"Dylan's living environment has long been unstable, unpredictable and unhealthy for a child. This culminated in a Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) investigation and juvenile dependency proceedings in 2018 and 2019."
Carol also recently opened up about another of her daughters, Carrie, and her struggle with substance abuse as well. She told People magazine:
"My daughter Carrie got into drugs. In that situation, don't be their best friend. When we got her into a third rehab, oh, she hated my guts! You have to love them enough to let them hate you."
Carrie died from cancer in January 2002, but she was sober at the time, and Carol shared that they were able to work their way toward a wonderful relationship.
Carol said that Carrie "got sober before her 18th birthday, and we had a good 20 years. We were joined at the hip for a while there."
Erin is a singer and even went on the road with the Grateful Dead while in her 20s. She later put together her own band and eventually began working as a solo artist. A few years ago, she spoke to Steven Housman about what it was like to grow up as her mother's daughter.
"I admire my mother tremendously. She's a hard worker who's incredibly talented and I had quite an opportunity to see all that every Friday at the Carol Burnett Show at CBS. We were there every single Friday for eleven years. The artists that I met, the performers that I met, I wanted to do that."
She also shared a fun story about her mom recording her singing herself to sleep at night:
"I remember my mom used to hide a tape recorder under my bed and I would sing myself to sleep every single night at the top of my lungs. So she has these tapes of me singing the blues and really fun stuff about my first boyfriend in kindergarten."
Erin had success with her 1999 version of "Dream Weaver," and she spoke about how her famous mother really wasn't much help in terms of advancing her career:
"If anything, it made it harder. There wasn't any nepotism. If my mother was Patti LaBelle she could've helped me out. My mother could help me get a commercial audition or things like that which I wasn't interested and I also didn't ask because I didn't want to ride on her coattails, I'm not into that whole thing at all. It actually harmed me more than it helped me."
Erin and Carol both share a strong dislike of tabloid culture. Carol even sued the National Enquirer and won $1.6 million in her lawsuit with the publication.
Erin said that she was hounded by reporters after her sister died.
"Then they were doing this article and they wanted to get an exclusive with me of how much my sister meant to me, and every [expletive] day for like three weeks they kept calling, but I never called them back. They were coming to my house leaving me flowers. It started at a certain amount of money and it kept going up and then giving me print approval and even to the point where they said I could write the article and have more money. Here they are offering me all this money and I had eighty cents in my pocket today to get gas to come to see you! (laughing). It was blood money and it was disgusting."
Erin cites Carrie as her inspiration for her own career:
"She’s the first person I saw sit down at the piano and write something that was so amazing that made me want to do it. It made me want to be a writer, not just a performer."
