Imagine growing up with famous comedian Don Knotts as your father. You might picture lots of funny faces at the dinner table or knock knock jokes on the way to school. The Andy Griffith Show actor’s daughter, Karen, once gave some insight into what it was really like at home with Don.

Karen Knotts on what Don Knotts was like as a father

Karen and her brother, Tom, grew up in Glendale, CA, which she says is about as Mayberry-like as a neighborhood is going to get in Los Angeles. She and Tom were still young when their parents divorced. Even so, they had a pretty idyllic childhood, according to Karen.

“It was a little surreal,” she told the Murfreesboro Post in 2011. “We lived in Glendale, which was almost Mayberry-like in smallness. It was a tight-knit community, like a small Midwest town in the middle of Los Angeles. Because my dad had such visibility, everybody knew where he lived, and fans would come to ask for autographs.”

But even with people seeking autographs knocking on their door, Karen called life with Don “so normal.” It’s all she ever knew.

She speaks very highly of the late actor.

“He was such a great, multi-faceted man,” she said. “My relationship with him was fantastic. We helped each other. He had a few little phobias. I think I helped him conquer them.”

Don’s humor was constantly coloring in the Knotts family’s lives.

“His humor was extremely witty, ironic and dry,” said Karen. “He had this whole humor of his own, like no other character. He would say things off-the-cuff funny, and he remembered tons and tons of stories from growing up and from the radio shows he loved, comedians like Jack Benny and Edgar Bergen. He could be very emotional about things, not very low key, and yet he was generally relaxed, very worldly and debonair.”

Don Knotts’ daughter on her father’s mental health

Don Knotts was a multi-faceted man, as Karen described. Like many famous comedians, Don struggled with mental health issues. He had a difficult childhood with an abusive, alcoholic father.

“My dad was very burdened down by all these problems,” Karen told Closer Weekly in 2018.

He went to a lot of therapy to try and work through these harrowing times from his childhood that stayed with him throughout his life.

“He was mercurial,” said Karen of her father. “He had a lot of different kinds of moods. He fought a lot of depression and I helped him, or thought I did, because I could see how he had this endless loop of thought that would always lead to a downward spiral. I would try to break through that and was like Pollyanna, pointing out the positives.”

Being Don Knotts’ kid wasn’t all roses. But even with his troubles, Karen says he was “a great father.”