Rise to Fame
Most breakthroughs come from playing it safe. Hers came from playing a recovering alcoholic TV journalist so convincingly that the sitting Vice President started a culture war with the character in 1992. Dan Quayle attacked Murphy Brown for depicting single motherhood; the show's writers responded by making him the punchline. Murphy Brown ran on CBS from 1988 to 1998, and she won five Emmy Awards for the role before declining further nominations. Before acting took over, she was a working photojournalist with bylines in Life and Esquire.
In the Spotlight
The timing she showed at the 2024 Emmys is hard to teach. Presenting an award, she jabbed at J.D. Vance's 'childless cat ladies' comment and closed with 'Meow.' She's been appearing in Shrinking on Apple TV+, working alongside Harrison Ford rather than doing nostalgia cameos. Her daughter Chloe Malle was named Editor-in-Chief of Vogue in 2025, succeeding Anna Wintour. Bergen spent her fifties and sixties building enough of a life that the work became optional.
Side Notes
Her father Edgar Bergen built a career as a ventriloquist, and when he died in 1978, his will left $10,000 to his wooden dummy Charlie McCarthy. It left nothing for Candice. The rest of the childhood was equally strange: she grew up riding Walt Disney's private miniature steam train alongside Liza Minnelli and Mia Farrow, then convinced her parents to ship her to a Swiss boarding school to escape Beverly Hills. She was the first woman to host Saturday Night Live, in 1975, got expelled from the University of Pennsylvania, and received an honorary degree from them twenty-seven years later.