Bill Hader Has a Crush on His Cousin, But Don’t Worry — It’s Just Carol Burnett

Admit it — it would be pretty trippy to get a personal email from Carol Burnett announcing that the two of you were cousins. But that’s what happened to Barry star Bill Hader after Burnett discovered the connection on the TV genealogy show, Finding Your Roots. “We are distantly related,” Burnett told Jimmy Kimmel earlier this week. “I’m very thrilled… It’s just great.” 

To Hader, “just great” didn’t begin to describe receiving that email. “It’s insane,” he exclaimed on Jimmy Kimmel Live two nights later. “I was like, what? I turn to my daughters and I’m like, ‘We’re related to (Annie villain) Miss Hannigan!’” 

Hader, who had previously been announced as a celebrity guest on Burnett’s birthday special, Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love, practically traded high fives with Kimmel. The disgruntled host complained that when discovered he was related to Martha Stewart on his own segment of Finding Your Roots, he didn’t hear from her at all.

So maybe it was Kimmel’s jealousy that inspired him to “do some digging,” finding a few video clips that Hader had done nearly 10 years ago for a DVD featuring lost episodes of The Carol Burnett Show. Hader not only heaped praise on Burnett’s comedic genius but revealed a secret yearning as well. It’s a clip, Kimmel said, that “it’s important that America sees.”

“I had a huge crush on Carol Burnett,” confessed 2015 Hader (admittedly before he knew they shared a few chromosomes). “Just that Q&A thing at the beginning. How could you not? It was such a smart thing doing that Q&A thing because I did, I just had a giant crush on her.”

There was nothing left for Kimmel to do but ask the obvious question: “You sick?”

“Well, you can take the boy out of Oklahoma…” leered Hader, leaving it to Kimmel and America to fill in the blank. “And that’s the way it works.”