Sometimes, you need to feel stranded to realize just how capable you are. To many, Lucille Ball seemed to have no shortage of confidence. As the star of I Love Lucy and a master of physical comedy, Ball is commonly considered the queen of television.

But according to close friend and frequent co-star Carol Burnett, Ball was in freefall after the loss of her husband and business partner, Desi Arnaz. The two divorced in 1960.

“He was smart,” Burnett remembered Ball having said of Arnaz when speaking with Interview Magazine. “He took care of the scripts, he invented the three-camera system by putting them on wheels. And all I had to do was come in and be silly Lucy, every week...And then we got divorced, and I realized I had to be like Desi.”

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With Ball at the helm of the ship, there was a slight learning curve, to put it lightly.

“It just was terrible,” Burnett recalled Ball having told her. “I didn’t know what to do because Desi wasn’t there to fix it.”

During a reading of one of the shows, Ball was having a difficult time expressing her dissatisfaction with the script. Finally, the actor realized she needed to have faith in herself and stand up for what she believed was right.“She went back after lunch,” said Burnett. “She said, ‘I told them in no uncertain terms what was wrong with the script.’ Because if you were Sid Caesar or Jackie Gleason, you’d say, ‘Hey, this sucks, fix it.’ But a woman, it’s a little tough, because when she gets tough, they label her with another word.”