Candice Bergen, known for her role as Murphy Brown, shared a dramatic anecdote about an incident in Switzerland when she was 14, during an appearance on Ted Danson's podcast, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name." Bergen recounted how she inadvertently started a fire at a high-end Swiss restaurant.
The event occurred at the Olden, a restaurant in the ski resort town of Gstaad, where Bergen was attending school. She explained that she had snuck out one evening, as she was not permitted to go out after dark at her age. While at the restaurant, she was having meat fondue with older girls and drinking wine, which was permissible in Switzerland at 14.
Bergen described the moment she decided to enhance the flavor of the hot fondue fat. "I said, ‘Oh, let’s flavor the fat. Let’s put some wine in the fat,’" she recalled. "So, I jauntily dumped my glass in the fat, and this flame went up onto the ceiling of the restaurant. And we were all evacuated; it was snowing outside."
Years later, Bergen returned to the Gstaad area and was recognized by an individual who remembered the incident. "And he said, ‘Aren’t you the woman who burned down the Olden?’" Bergen said. "And I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ So, my name had lived on."
In the same podcast episode, Bergen also mentioned having previously dated Donald Trump and Henry Kissinger.