Candice Bergen Reveals She Nearly Burned Down a Restaurant at 14

Candice Bergen Is More Like "Murphy Brown" Than Ever

Candice Bergen once took the phrase “playing with fire” a little too seriously.

But instead of burning down the house, the Murphy Brown alum accidentally set fire to a restaurant that had been standing in Switzerland since 1895. Allow her to explain.

“It was the Olden in Gstaad in a ski resort where the school I was going to was set,” she explained to Ted Danson on his Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast. “I had snuck out. Because I was only 14, I wasn’t allowed to go out at night, so I’d snuck out.”

As she noted, the Olden wasn’t “just any restaurant, it was the nicest restaurant,” which is what makes this story all the more sizzling.

Bergen and some older schoolmates went to the Olden for a snack, where they were enjoying wine, “which you could do in Switzerland because there was no age restriction,” and meat fondue, where pieces of meat are cooked in boiling oil or fat at the table.

“I said, ‘Oh, let’s flavor the fat. Let’s put some wine in the fat,’” the 80-year-old 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.”

BERTRAND LAFORET/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

As for the consequences of her actions, Bergen admitted, “I was not allowed out for the rest of the year—and quite rightly.”

And while the Olden was reopened after a period of repairs and has been functioning quite well in the decades since, some flames leave permanent scars, as Bergen would discover years later.

“I went back to Staad with my second husband, Marshall Rose, we were walking in the village,” she explained, “and a very nice, older-looking ski instructor said, ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you Candice Bergen?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I am.’”

Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

But moments later, her pride at being recognized went up in smoke.

“And he said, ‘Aren’t you the woman who burned down the Olden?’” she continued. “And I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ So, my name had lived on.”

For more celebrities who have shared surprising anecdotes about their personal lives, read on.

For the latest breaking news updates, click here to download the E! News App