Don Knotts’ Daughter Recounts Actor Being ‘Exhausted’ At Home While Working Difficult Schedule on “The Andy Griffith Show”
Don Knotts’ Daughter Recounts Actor Being ‘Exhausted’ At Home While Working Difficult Schedule on “The Andy Griffith Show”
Virginia ChamleeMon, September 7, 2026 at 5:17 PM UTC
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Don Knotts and Karen KnottsCredit: CBS Photo Archive/Getty; Amanda Edwards/Getty -
Karen Knotts shared how her father balanced long workdays on The Andy Griffith Show with being a devoted dad
Don Knotts often rehearsed at home on weekends due to his heavy involvement in every episode of the show
Karen fondly recalled listening to her father rehearse and mimicking his famous line, “This is big,” as a child
Karen Knotts is looking back on what her childhood was like while her dad, Don Knotts, maintained an “exhausting” schedule while filming the The Andy Griffith Show.
Karen, 72, opened up about life with her father in a new interview with The Jim Masters Show.
Don, who was best known for his role as Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, died in 2006 at the age of 81 from complications due to lung cancer.
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Don KnottsCredit: CBS Photo Archive/Getty
“The truth is that he worked so many hours on The Andy Griffith Show,” Karen said. “I mean, they had 10-hour days, and so by the time he got home from work, he was pretty exhausted. But he was still a great dad. He was a wonderful father.”
Karen added that Don “would be very tired” after working all day — and would often bring work home with him: “He rehearsed so much. Even at home, he rehearsed cause in those days, they made more episodes than they do now. And he was heavy in every episode.”
“So he had a lot of lines to learn,” she said. “And so on the weekends, instead of being out, having fun, a lot of the times, he would be learning his lines for the next week’s episode. So he would be, you know, holed up in his room listening.”
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As a child, Karen said she would listen outside the door to him rehearsing, adding, “He didn’t know I was doing that until one day he he opened the door and saw me there.”
“I remember he was he was rehearsing this line: ‘This is big,’” she recounted. “You know that line he uses all the time. ‘This is big.’ And only he could do it with his eyes and his expressions.”
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She continued: “And one time he opened the door and I said, ‘This is big.’ I was only about six years old.”
The Andy Griffith Show also starred Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor and Ron Howard as Andy’s son Opie.
Before the show premiered in 1960, Griffith, who died in 2012 at 86, and Don had both agreed they would only star on the series for five seasons.
Griffith ultimately decided to stay with the show, while Don chose to leave, making only guest appearances on The Andy Griffith Show and the spinoff Mayberry R.F.D. before returning for the 1986 TV movie Return to Mayberry.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
