Candice Bergen Set Fire to the Olden Restaurant in Switzerland at 14

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.