I was sitting in a studio a few weeks ago, recording a podcast.

The host was going through the usual list of questions about the show.

He wanted to know about the heavy dramatic moments, the emotional goodbyes, and the challenges of balancing comedy with the tragedies of war.

But then he caught me off guard.

He leaned into the microphone and asked about the physical toll of the filming.

He asked me to describe the absolute longest, most exhausting day we ever had on the soundstage.

My mind immediately went to the operating room.

If you have never been on a television set, you might not realize how punishing the lights used to be back in the 1970s.

We filmed those medical scenes on a closed-in soundstage at the 20th Century Fox lot.

It was essentially a massive wooden box filled with incredibly hot, high-wattage studio lights beating down on us for twelve to fourteen hours a day.

We were dressed in full surgical gowns, heavy rubber gloves, caps, and masks.

Underneath those gowns, we were sweating profusely.

In fact, most of the cast stopped wearing pants under the gowns just to survive the heat.

On this particular day, we were filming a master shot.

A master shot is a long, continuous take where everyone has to hit their marks perfectly.

We had to deliver complex medical jargon and pass surgical instruments back and forth without missing a single beat.

If one person drops a clamp or messes up a line about a retractor, the whole take is ruined.

You have to reset the background actors, clean up the fake blood, and start all over from the very beginning.

We were on take four or five.

Everyone was completely running on fumes.

Our eyes were bloodshot, our feet were aching from standing on the concrete floor, and the air in the studio was thick and stale.

The director called action, and we launched into the dialogue.

I asked for a sponge.

Mike Farrell asked for a clamp.

We were in the rhythm.

It was going perfectly.

We were halfway through the scene, completely dialed in, just desperate to finish the shot and go home.

The tension was incredibly thick because nobody wanted to be the one to mess up this perfect take.

And that’s when it happened.

A low, rumbling vibration started echoing from somewhere near my feet.

At first, I thought it was an airplane flying over the studio.

Sometimes we had to stop filming because the sound of a jet would bleed through the thin walls of the soundstage.

But this sound was completely different.

It was rhythmic.

It was organic.

It was a snore.

I kept my hands inside the fake patient’s chest cavity, trying to stay in character, but I glanced down toward the floor.

There, curled up perfectly around the thick black cables of the camera, was Gary Burghoff.

Gary played Radar, and in this particular shot, he wasn’t needed until the very end of the scene when he was supposed to burst through the doors with a message.

Instead of waiting out in his dressing room, he had crawled under the operating table to get out of the way.

He had found a tiny patch of shadow beneath the blinding studio lights.

And because he was completely exhausted like the rest of us, he had simply closed his eyes and fallen fast asleep.

He wasn’t just resting his eyes.

He was in a deep, heavy slumber.

And he was snoring loudly.

I looked across the table at Mike.

Because we were wearing surgical masks, you could only see the top half of our faces.

But you can tell a lot about a person from their eyes.

Mike’s eyes were wide with panic, and then they immediately crinkled into half-moons.

He was trying his absolute hardest not to laugh.

I bit the inside of my cheek so hard it almost bled.

I forced out my next line, something about a ruptured spleen, but my voice wavered slightly.

The snoring got a little louder.

Gary let out this little whistling sound at the end of his breath, the kind of cartoonish snore you would hear in an old animated movie.

The camera operator, who was physically leaning over the table to get a tight shot of our hands, started shaking.

When the camera operator laughs, the heavy camera shakes.

When the camera shakes, the shot becomes completely useless.

But nobody yelled cut.

The director was sitting further back behind the monitors, trying to figure out what the audio interference was.

He was asking the sound mixer if there was feedback on the microphones or a broken generator outside.

Meanwhile, the entire surgical staff around that table was practically vibrating with suppressed laughter.

Loretta Swit was standing next to me, holding a tray of instruments.

I could hear the metal clamps rattling against each other because her hands were shaking so much from holding in her giggles.

We were all trapped in this agonizing, hilarious game of chicken.

Nobody wanted to break character and ruin the scene, but nobody could ignore the fact that our beloved company clerk was sawing logs directly beneath the fake intestines.

Finally, I had to move my leg to shift my weight, and the toe of my boot accidentally brushed against Gary’s side.

He snorted loudly, smacked his lips a few times, and mumbled something completely incoherent in his sleep.

That was the breaking point.

Mike broke first.

He let out a loud snort, dropped his prop scalpel onto the floor, and turned away from the table.

Once Mike went, I lost it completely.

I pulled my mask down and doubled over, leaning my hands on the edge of the operating table.

I was laughing so hard that my ribs physically ached.

Loretta had to put her instrument tray down before she dropped it, and the entire crew erupted into laughter.

The director finally realized what was happening and called cut.

Gary woke up with a massive jolt, hit his head on the underside of the operating table, and crawled out looking completely bewildered.

His round glasses were crooked on his face.

He looked at all of us, wiping his eyes, and innocently asked if he had missed his cue.

We laughed for another ten minutes straight.

It was the kind of helpless, oxygen-deprived laughter that only happens when you are pushed to the absolute limits of your physical endurance.

We couldn’t get a usable take for the rest of the hour.

Every time we set back up and the director called action, one of us would look down at the empty space under the table and start giggling all over again.

They eventually had to playfully ban people from hiding under the operating table.

It became a legendary running joke for the rest of the series.

Whenever the crew was setting up a difficult medical scene, someone would inevitably peek under the table just to make sure Gary wasn’t using it as a hotel room.

Looking back on it now, those are the chaotic moments I cherish the most.

The show dealt with such heavy themes, and we were always trying to honor the reality of the subject matter with respect.

But behind the scenes, we were just a group of exhausted friends trying to keep each other sane in a hot, windowless room.

Humor is often the only defense mechanism you have when the hours are long and the work is hard.

What is the hardest you have ever laughed at the worst possible time?