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Mike Evans said it was tough not to laugh at Carroll O'Connor when he played Archie Bunker
The laughs on and off the set of All in the Family.
When you have fun at your job, is it really work? Yes, the answer is yes. But the good news is that some jobs are more fun than others, especially if you love the people you work with.
The cast of All in the Family was not only fortunate enough to work with some incredibly funny material, but the actors got along fairly well off-set too, which meant that working together was that much easier.
According to Mike Evans, best known as Lionel Jefferson of All in the Family, he found himself struggling not to laugh during filming when lead Carroll O'Connor portrayed Archie Bunker. Strangely enough, Evans found that the funniest moments came when Archie was his most bigoted, precisely because Evans knew O'Connor as a person well enough to know that Archie's views directly contradicted O'Connor. "My first reaction was to try not to laugh," Evans said to the Muncie Evening Press. "Eventually, I just got used to it. Basically, Carroll O'Connor is my friend who happens to be acting a part."
Part of Evans' good humor also came from the absurdity of the acting profession as a whole, which, let's be honest, makes a lot of sense. "Here we are doing all this silly stuff and they're paying us for it," said Evans.
Not only did the cast profit financially, but they also gained recognition and appreciation amongst viewers everywhere. But while O'Connor was merely playing a part when he acted as Archie Bunker, Evans was well aware that there were real Archie Bunkers out there with similar views, and they weren't quite as funny.
Still, Evans didn't let it bother him. "I consider myself a strong person," he said. "It's important to me to be liked, but if people don't like me I won't go out of my way, 'cause I know that someone else will like me."
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