Reclusive sitcom star Delta Burke has spoken up about some of her mental and physical struggles as an actress in the 80s – including one with crystal meth.
The 67-year-old starred as a former beauty queen on the set of CBS’s Designing Women, but on Friday said it was there she was treated more like a slave.
She famously fell out of favor with the show’s bosses by complaining the set had become ‘unpleasant’ in a 1990 interview with Barbara Walters. She was off the show the following year.
Speaking to Chelsea Devantez on her podcast Glamorous Trash more than 30 years later, she said of her mindset at this time ‘I wanted to leave.’
‘And I wasn’t allowed to ,’ she went on, describing how her dream TV role went downhill with time. ‘I don’t know what would have happened to me if I had been allowed to leave… It got ugly and very sad.’
Sitcom star Delta Burke (seen here at a Hollywood event in 2020) has spoken up about some of her mental and physical struggles as an actress in the 80s – including one with crystal meth
The 67-year-old starred as a former beauty queen on the set of CBS’s Designing Women, but said on Friday it was there she was treated more like a slave
‘We do Designing Women, and I’m so happy to be there,’ she told Devantez of her five years as glamorous divorcee Suzanne Sugarbaker, before getting into the nitty gritty of her drug addiction.
‘I love everything,’ she said, providing her first words on the subject in decades.
‘But then things started to change, which I won’t go into.
‘But that, combined with becoming famous, that I simply couldn’t cope with.’
The actress still lives in LA, with longtime husband Gerald McRaney, 76. Showrunners at point said McRaney, also an actor, was responsible for her struggles during this period, but Burke on Friday claimed otherwise.
‘I love my life truly for the first time,’ she said of her currently, low-profile life with McRaney, with whom she’s been wed for 35 years. ‘And I love him desperately,’
‘I know that I’m safe and I’m loved,’ she went on, before insisting, ‘I didn’t feel that there.
‘I wanted to be so much, and I didn’t get to be what I wanted to be.’
She went on to claim that one of the main contributors to her contentious 1991 exit was scrutiny over her weight, which she said also led to her getting addicted to drugs.
Burke (seen here Suzanne Sugarbaker on the set of Designing Women in 1986) clamed one of the main contributors to her contentious 1991 exit was scrutiny over her weight, which she said led to her getting addicted to drugs
She starred alongside Annie Potts, Jean Smart and the late Dixie Carter as foour Southern women pursuing their dreams as high powered interior designers. The series, which earned Burke two Emmy award nominations, ended in 1993
She admitted she was ’emotionally too fragile’ to deal with such scruinty at the time, before recalling people questioning whether she was pregnant at the time, and an instance when a fan ‘jerked’ her coat open and said, ‘Let’s see, how fat are ya?’
‘I tried very hard to defend myself against lies and all the ugliness that was there and I wasn’t gonna win. I’m just an actress, you know. I don’t have any power’
‘I remember on the set, when it got to be really bad, and I wasn’t handling it well with a smiling face, my whole body language changed. I would kind of hunch over… I just tried to disappear’
Drugs came next, she said, revealing how she turned to crystal meth as a weight loss method
She admitted she was ’emotionally too fragile’ to deal with such scrutiny at the time, before recalling people questioning whether she was pregnant at the time, and an instance when a fan ‘jerked’ her coat open and said, ‘Let’s see, how fat are ya?’
‘I thought I was stronger,’ she told Devantez during the rare podcast appearance.
‘I tried very hard to defend myself against lies and all the ugliness that was there and I wasn’t gonna win. I’m just an actress, you know. I don’t have any power.’
‘I remember on the set, when it got to be really bad, and I wasn’t handling it well with a smiling face, my whole body language changed. I would kind of hunch over.., I just tried to disappear.’
Drugs came next, she said, revealing how she turned to crystal meth as a weight loss method.
‘They were like medicine to me,’ she told Devantez of prescription pills billed back then as Black Beauties, which eventually led to crystal meth.
‘Nobody knew about [it] at the time,” she said, referring to the dangerous drug, which she was told to ‘snort’ but would instead “put it in cranberry juice.”
Starring in mid-80s series Filthy Rich at the time, she’d drink it before she’d go to work, she said, after which she ‘wouldn’t eat for five days.”
“And they were still saying, “Your butt’s too big. Your legs are too big,”‘ she further recalled. ‘And I now look back at those pictures and go, “I was a freaking goddess.”‘
‘They were like medicine to me,’ she told Devantez of prescription pills billed back then as Black Beauties, which eventually led to crystal meth
!['Nobody knew about [it] at the time,” she said, referring to the dangerous drug, which she was told to 'snort' but would instead “put it in cranberry juice.”](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/04/22/15/83942859-13336301-image-a-23_1713794455917.jpg)
‘Nobody knew about [it] at the time,” she said, referring to the dangerous drug, which she was told to ‘snort’ but would instead “put it in cranberry juice.”
“And they were still saying, “Your butt’s too big. Your legs are too big,”‘ she recalled Friday. ‘And I now look back at those pictures and go, “I was a freaking goddess.”‘ Burke, who was nominated for two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series during her time on the show, is seen here at the awards in 1990 with husband Gerald McRaney
Producers and co-stars in the hit back at the actress’s workplace claims in 1992, claiming her husband was the one responsible. Burke is seen the following years on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno
Burke made her debut in Designing Women in 1986, a show that charted the ups and downs of four southern women making their way through tough times whilst pursuing their dreams as high powered interior designers.
However, over, the course of her five seasons, she fell out with her show’s bosses, causing a stir in 1990 by complaining to 60 Minutes’ Walters the set had become a ‘difficult, unpleasant workplace’.
Within months, bosses fired and replaced her, doing away with her beloved, unabashed character.
Delta went on to double down about her bad time on the show and claimed she had been bullied over her weight and subjected to ‘psychological abuse’.
Producers and co-stars in the hit back at the actress’s workplace claims in 1992, claiming her husband was the one responsible.
Producer Doug Jackson told TV Guide at the time: ‘Immediately after Delta started dating Gerald, there was a marked change in her relationship with all of us.
One producer told TV Guide at the time: ‘Immediately after Delta started dating Gerald, there was a marked change in her relationship with all of us. Burke and longtime husband Gerald McRaney, both actors, have been married since May 1989,
Both have long kept out of the public eye. They live in LA and have no children together
On Friday, after only being seen at the occasion red carpet event, she sternly warned , ‘Hollywood will mess your head up’
‘She was a fun, kicky girl at the start. After Gerald came on the scene, she came on the set one day to announce to the cast, ‘Gerald says I am the star of the show and I should be boss’.’
Besides her role on Designing Women, Delta has gone on to star in various shows, plays and movies such as a cameo in Mel Gibson’s What Women Want in 2000.
Other appearances include TV series Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings (2019), Any Day Now (1998-1999), Boston Legal (2007) and Touched By An Angel (1996-2001.)
On Friday, after only being seen at the occasion red carpet event, she sternly warned, ‘Hollywood will mess your head up. And I had always thought, “I want to be a famous actress.”
‘I thought that meant that you would be a famous and well-respected actress, but that’s not what it meant.
And the moment I became famous, it was like, “Oh no, no, no. This is not what I had in mind at all. I don’t think I want to be this anymore.” But then it’s too late.’
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