Delta Burke says she used crystal meth to lose weight Los Angeles Times
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She expressed that she felt grateful to her husband for everything he had done for her and for providing a place for her to return to her roots. Their wedding was a grand affair at the Biltmore Hotel attended by 500 guests. Yet it was also filled with personal touches that highlighted Burke’s Southern roots and design skills. The couple's relationship was characterized by shared passions and parallel careers. Burke felt this helped them foster a nurturing environment free from jealousy. Burke explained that they both had the same career, which allowed them to celebrate one another's successes.
Personal details
Even when disagreements arise, their love and appreciation for each other overrides conflict.
Delta Burke is in-demand as a voice actor
Cheryl started in hospitality and has completed over 30 hotels, multiple restaurants, retail stores, offices, medical spaces, and auto dealerships. You guys are great to work with, and thanks to all of you again making this such a bearable process. You guys not only beat the baby, but you made it in time for the birthday party we scheduled last minute. I'm sure you'll hear from us in about a year when I have a new project in mind. Complete restoration of a 1950’s ranch-style home, including a mid-century modern design kitchen.
Weight issues
While her co-stars cited her "difficult" and "demanding" personality as the problem, Burke contends that she was harassed about her weight on set, and was fired for being a whistleblower regarding her "psychological abuse." Burke was given her own vehicle with the sitcom Delta in 1992, in which she portrayed an aspiring country music singer. She dyed her hair blonde for the role.[11] When ratings plummeted, Burke became a brunette again. In 1995, she and Linda Bloodworth Thomason reconciled their differences, and Burke returned as Suzanne Sugarbaker in the Designing Women spinoff Women of the House (1995), but that show also met an early demise. They have since spoken highly of each other during interviews and shared triumphs and failures.
However, in spite of Burke's performance, the critic likened the overall experience of sitting through the show to "watching nail polish dry." Delta Burke was well cast as this character of prestige, power, and influence, and it marked her first regular role on a TV series since "Women of the House" flopped five years earlier. Throughout her career, Burke has publicly struggled with her weight, reaching an all-time high of 215 pounds by the time she left "Designing Women." She has been candid about her ongoing battles with depression and type 2 diabetes. Delta Burke earned two Emmy nods for her portrayal of former beauty queen Suzanne Sugarbaker on Designing Women.
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McRaney countered this accusation while sitting down with Walters by pointing out a double standard that's now widely recognized in Hollywood. "As an actor, not as a producer, what I've discovered is that if a man is very demanding and very exacting, then he's a thorough professional," he said. In a woman, he pointed out, these same traits would be seen as problematic.
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She was cast in a number of well-known pieces, but her popularity was definitely in decline, even when she reprised her role as Suzanne Sugarbaker in a 1995 spinoff series called Women of the House. She went on to be a supporting actress in What Women Want and had guest roles on Boston Legal and Drop Dead Diva. Burke also tried her hand at Broadway, starring in Steel Magnolias and Thoroughly Modern Millie. The show centered around the women running a design firm in Atlanta, Georgia.
Gerald McRaney has been Delta Burke's rock through it all
Apart from the occasional TV role, movie gig, theatrical engagement, and interview, Delta Burke has stayed out of the public eye in the 21st century. "Delta disappeared from Hollywood because the industry and the people in it were becoming detrimental to her health," a source close to the actor told OK! "She's moving more slowly these days, but she still smiles at people who recognize her on the street." Amid the tumult of a controversial TV career noted with a contentious exit from a hit show and a string of flops, Delta Burke has enjoyed one of the longest-lasting marriages in Hollywood, where conventional wisdom says relationships fizzle out quickly. The actress also elaborated on a particularly standout anecdote she shared in her memoir, which was that she once turned to crystal meth as a weight loss method. What started with her taking prescribed pills while attending drama school in London turned into something else when she returned to the U.S. and found that the pills she’d been taking were illegal, she said.
The show's breakout star played the sharp-tongued Southern princess for five seasons before she was abruptly and unceremoniously booted from the cast in 1991. Meeting McRaney (who won an Emmy in 2017 for guest-starring on This Is Us) was one of the best things to come from that dark period, Burke said. "Whatever went down that was bad, it was worth because I met him. No one had ever loved me completely for me, not even my mother or grandmother. They would judge what I looked like. He never did." The press ruthlessly covered Burke's weight gain at the time, leading to her disillusionment with Hollywood. On Glamorous Trash, she discussed resorting to essentially taking crystal meth to shed pounds during her time on her pre-Designing Women series Filthy Rich. "I love everything. 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, and I wanted to leave and I wasn't allowed to leave."
” Burke exited the series in a tumult with producers and abuse allegations, and after her option wasn’t picked up. She was trailed shortly by co-star Jean Smart, who went on to “Hacks” fame. Burke rose to fame as Suzanne Sugarbaker, receiving two Emmy nominations for the role. She left the show in 1991, following a dispute with producers, but was cast in her own eponymous short-lived sitcom the following year. In a 1992 interview with Deseret News, she claimed she was psychologically abused on set and was fired for being a whistleblower.
Now, though, she says she's grateful she wound up staying as long as she did. At the time of her exit from the show, Bloodworth-Thomason and her husband, and show executive producer, Harry Thomason, said that McRaney was to blame. "I thought I was stronger. I tried very hard to defend myself against lies and all the ugliness that was there and I wasn't gonna win," Burke shared. Chatting on the Glamorous Trash podcast with Chelsea Devantez, Burke admitted that she'd been taking daily pills since she was in acting school in an attempt to manage her weight. By Burke's account, their marriage has been rock solid, even and especially through individual challenges, like her weight gain and type 2 diabetes (per Eating Well), and his lung cancer surgery. "He loves me no matter what," Burke said (via OK!), while a source close to the couple reported that the two have spent most of their marriage living apart, with McRaney traveling for on-location shoots and Burke staying behind in one of their shared homes.
"By the end of the first season, I began hearing more reports about my weight, which was always my weak point anyway. I was always hearing that I was never thin enough," the actress told United Press International (UPI). In the years that followed, she joined the casts of several high profile shows, including Popular, Touched by an Angel, DAG, Boston Legal, and Dolly Parton's Heartstrings. In the mid-aughts, she starred in the Broadway productions Thoroughly Modern Millie and Steel Magnolias. In 1992, she was replaced by actor Julia Duffy for the sixth season of the show.
She was also one of the most scrutinized, with tabloids hyper-focused for years on her weight. Having been bitten by the live theater bug, Burke returned to Broadway in April 2005 in a revival of "Steel Magnolias," the enduringly popular play about a group of Southern women. (Burke starred as Truvy, the small town beauty shop proprietor portrayed by Dolly Parton in the film adaptation.) In a bittersweet critique of the play, The New York Times gave a nice nod to Burke, saying she "exudes microwave warmth" in the role.
Producer Doug Jackson shared a similar sentiment in a 1992 interview with TVGuide, crediting McRaney for Burke's personality shift. Before landing the the role of Suzanne Sugarbaker on Designing Women in 1986, Delta Burke, 67, had earned several television roles starting in the late 1970s. That removal meant she wouldn't accompany her husband to public events because she couldn't put up with the "nonsense" that came along with it.
It also starred Meshach Taylor as their delivery-man-turned-partner Anthony Bouvier. Smart excited alongside Burke after Season 5, leading to the addition of Julia Duffy as cousin Allison Sugarbaker and Jan Hooks as Charlene's sister Carlene Frazier-Dobber. Duffy would in turn be replaced by Judith Ivey's Bonnie Jean "BJ" Poteet for Season 7.
“Sometimes I wonder, would I have been happier if I hadn’t done the show, but the thing is, I don’t know if I would have had a career or become well known for this fabulous character, but I wouldn’t have met Mac. So it was worth anything, whatever went down that was bad, it was worth [it] and we’re so happy to be here. LOS ANGELES — “Designing Women” alum Delta Burke says her “ugly” experience on the hit CBS sitcom drove her away from Los Angeles, and her longtime struggle with her weight led her to use crystal meth to keep off the pounds. In 2017, the 62-year-old stage and film actress accompanied her husband to the Emmy Award ceremony, a sort of recreation of one of their first dates. Despite having an acting career that spans five decades, McRaney's received his first nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award in 2017.
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