Designing Women with Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, Part 2

Welcome to Eighties TV Ladies, part of the weirding Way Media Network Eighties and so Pretty Through the City, Getting the Money Man World. Hello friends, welcome to Eighties TV Ladies, where we explore female driven television shows from the nineteen eighties and celebrate the people who made them. You are your hosts, Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert had them. Hello, I'm Susan and I'm Sharon. Welcome to part two of our discussion with the creator of Designing Women, Linda Bludworth Thomason.

You can start listening here if you want, but you can also go back and listen to part one if you want all the great stories, and we're just gonna jump right back into the discussion. We love where these conversations go, and in particular, your voice is so important and has been so important in television. But Designing Women and what we're here for. Yeah, and so speaking of her relationship with Jeryl McGraney, Oh, Delta, Yeah, Yes, he's devoted to her and he's hurt ballast in life. You know, Delta is very fragile in many ways.

For all of her sass in her acting, you know, she needs someone really by her side a very protective kind of person and he that's his role in life that he loves. So it's just very lucky, you know that they met. It's funny everybody who came on our show like that. These men would come on our show, like Joe McGraney or Richard Gilliland, and then we wouldn't see them again, like for the rest of the week because they're in you know, the act dressing room. What's going on?

I mean, what kind of a place is this? And I mean people were just falling in love, like you know, some kind of substance in the air that was making people keel over with anyway, there was a lot of romance on designing Women. We were on Stage twenty six, which if you look up the history of Stage twenty six, some of the most important, big, sheltered broad movies were shot there, and all of these actresses like Betty Davis and Roslyn Russell, I mean Betty Davis and Jezebel was there. We always felt like, oh, there's something in the ether here, you know, these the spirit of these women is still here. Because we didn't really plan any kind of big shouldered attitude, you know, that wasn't any intent that.

I guess it was kind of in the writing, but then it was really also in the in it, you know, and they probably didn't even know how much they had a certain camaraderie with all those kinds of women who you know, inhabited the big screen and really, you know, they were very alluring to girls who wanted to emulate them. And I think those four actresses, you know, caught a dose of that. I love that. So this is this is on Warner Brothers lot, right, Is that where you shot? Yes, yes, it was, And at first we did not we had the cast that we wanted.

Mishek was not in the pilot. But you know, we had put Jean and Annie in a show that we were doing with Robert Wagner and John Standing called Lime Street, and we had this one episode that took place in Amsterdam. Harry was directing, and we needed these diamond thieves who were women, and they were funny and silly and they were goofy friends and in jail together. Anyway, it was fran Cast, Jean Smart Anti pot I did. I didn't even know them, and they were so brilliant in that episode that you know, and that that show was canceled, but that's the gift that we got from it.

And so when I was going to designing women, you know, friend said, brought in Dixie and who I didn't even know existed. I'm sorry, you know what I've told this story running. No, I was thinking of my first casting session with that all did happen, Yeah, but that was for Guilty rich And when Dixie left the room, I mean, that was the greatest casting day of my life. When she left the room, I just turned to friend and said, I don't know frand where you found her, but I want her for everything from now on. Every part just was so entertaining, so hilarious, such an exotic flower, you know, and I mean just charming beyond you know, anybody.

So that was a done deal. And then she brings in Delta. I've never met anybody like Delta. First of all, when she was first cast, she was probably the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. And later on that year, I think it was Richard Scavallo, the famous world famous photographer, named her as one of the ten most beautiful women in the world.

And she really was. I mean, she was like Elizabeth Taylor and oddly enough, Elizabeth Taylor fell in love with the show and wanted to come on and play Delta's mother, but that didn't work out for reasons. I don't think anybody knows that. It never came to fruition, But anyway, fell in love with Delta. Then Frand Fine Scene and Annie in Lime Street, and Franz said, let's when, why didn't you put them together?

And I, oh, brilliant, I did, so we did. Now here was the hitch. CBS would not approve Delta, and so that was really a blow because she was inexperienced except for Filthy Rich. She really hadn't done a lot of comedy and Filthy Rich was pretty broad, you know, and and a little bit cartoony. I didn't want to do that.

I wanted to do it for that that show, but I knew I wanted designing women to be more relatable and less broad, and so anyway, they just would not approve her. So we cast another actors. Heartbreakingly, it did not work, and I knew it wasn't going to work, but you know, I had no choice, I did. I had three people I loved, and so the week that we were shooting the pilot, you know, we had to run through and it was just not happening with this actress. And so I think it was three days before we were shooting the pilot.

Anyway, I called Delta and I said get over here, and she said what when? And I said now, and she said, I'm in my pajamas. I said, I don't care. Get in your car and head here. The network is here where you're going to get your tryout.

So she came or and they let her be in it. And thank god, you know, you can tell in the pilot, I think that as you can. And almost all pilots, you know, people have not found there. You know, they're in a swimming pool and they haven't found the concrete yet, you know where they can plant their feet. They're kind of swimming around.

Delta is swimming the hardest and you can see that. But she's still funny as help and you know, and looks like a million bucks, and so it all, it all kind of worked. I think, absolutely, that's so crazy. So she wasn't on that show until three days before you shot before before we shot it, right, and I just was so grateful that they weren't. You know, the CBS gave in.

They didn't have anybody else. You know, we were lucky because they don't understand the Southern thing, and they didn't have anybody who spoke feathered who they thought was funny, and so they really couldn't keep messing with us, you know, because Delta was just standing there saying I'm available, I'm available. I don't really think they thought it was going to work with her, But then after the pilot was shot, they totally saw you know what we had. Okay, I was going to say, and then they saw it, and then they were like, oh, yeah, that's what we wanted. Anyway, Yes, that was what they wanted.

They just didn't know it. They had only seen her in a casting situation. They hadn't seen her interact with the rest of the women. And that was the other thing that saved her was the chemistry was so perfect, and she and Dixie just right out of the ship, you know, it was like so they were born to be sisters, and they were born to spar and born to love each other, and they just had you know, they had the chemistry that was necessary for that relationship that is fantastic. And so once you shot that pilot, we're like we got it.

I mean, we got to fix some things. Everybody's got to find their feet. But did you feel like I've got the show that is going to go? I absolutely did. But unfortunately there was a president.

This was not the president who eventually raised the white flag when we got canceled. The initial president of CBS when we were trying to get on the air was a gentleman who didn't really love the show. But Harvey Shepherd had okayed the show, and it was shot, and it was expensive, and everybody around him liked it, and so he didn't love it. He never believed in it. And then we went to the upfront in New York and he got up and by then the press had all seen it, and he got up at the upfronts and apologized before they had already seen it in there.

You know, we'd already sent it out to them. But at the upfront, you know how they do trailers and have the cast there and everything, And he got up and apologized for the show. And this was a really unusual thing that a lot of people in the press booed him because they loved it, and so he and he wasn't really a bad guy. I'm not going to say who he is, because I actually liked the guy, but he just didn't get it at first, and so he went, okay, you know, to each his own if you all like it, hey, you know, I'm not going to discourage it. But I've never even seen anybody do that at an upfront, like get up and kind of trash their own show.

But I think he was embarrassed by because he didn't really get it. Okay, So then we premiere. We premiered to incredible reviews. You know, it was just really almost animals. Everybody fell in love with the cast, loved the show.

Never you know, never had anything quite like this, you know, with these Southern women and they're really smart and sexy and and they're feminists. But the one thing I tried to do, and I told friend this, you know, you've got to find me when we were initially talking about it, because I knew I wanted to write a show, you know, about Southern women. I said, they've got to be really, really beautiful, Friend, They've got to be so good looking because they're going to be saying horrible stuff about men, and so I want to make the men want them, you know, and so they won't be so offensive to men, and so that's what we got. Anyway, that's what the critics were all saying. You know, these women are so attractive and they're feminists, but you love them.

So then we go on and you know, they jerk us around because president kept changing our spot. I think we were changed three different plots, which you just really can't do with a new show. H So he canceled it. And then the new president came in, who was Bud Grant, and Bud liked the show and he was really reasonable and the geos for quality television, and Harry saved it and that's why he raised the white flag. And I was in Missouri then because by then, you know, my mother had passed away and it was a horrible, horrible, worst pirit of my life.

And Harry been in Missouri with me, but he came back asure to do that, and so we you know, we we got a reprieve from the governor, so to speak, and from then on it never really faltered. You know, once we once people started tuning in, the audience got bigger and bigger every week, and we were not just strong in the South. In fact, a couple of our biggest audiences every week were in Boston and San Francisco. I said San Francisco because the gay community embraced the show from the very star art. I never didn't understand why Boss and loved Designing Women so much that they did.

And just one are those quirky things? Wow? Okay, so you've got this show, and did you just get to come up with whatever you wanted to talk about? You know, the strange thing about Designing Women is that I was never a script ahead because, like I said, in May, when I got the green light or April, I guess was when my mom came out here. My mother had had open heart surgery several years before and received a large dose of intaminated blood, and so it was a big infusion of AIDS.

You know, there was no question that she was going to last very long. That we didn't know she had AIDS because the hospital that gave or AIDS refused to diagnose her. They just kept saying, you have hepatitis. You know, they didn't want to be reponsible. There was a law of suits that followed and all of that.

But what happened was, you know, she came out here and was in a few hours of landing. I had her at a specialist and he came out and said, your mother as age. So that was a really, really hard blow. And I had written the pilot, of course, but i'd written no episodes. And now we're now we're in it, you know, now we're we're fighting.

Remember back then, I mean, we're at the hospital and nobody wants to treat us. Nobody wants to come in the room with her. People have forgotten. Everybody was in a mask. I was in a space suit, you know, with my with my mom practically, I mean often on surgical gear.

If I held her hand with a rubber glove. And the hospital staff was very inept at I mean, we had wonderful medical care, but the attitude was terrible, you know. I mean they clearly didn't want to have her there. They weren't an age hospital. They didn't want to touch her.

And so this became a battle, and finally the whole hospital was called together and they were reprimanded, I mean, the nursing staff, they were reprimanded for the way that my mom and others were treated. There were seventeen young men on the ward and my mother, and it was so sad because some of the you know, some of the really I thought of them as boys. You know, they were younger than me. I was in my thirties, and they would just die, you know, without family or anybody there. I remember when guy who died, you know, during a wheel fortune, and no one was in the room with him.

It was horrible. And because I would sit out in the TV room, you know, maybe I remember his room was across the hall, and some nurse came and announced that he was dead, and I thought, what a horrible I don't know what happened to his friends, but his family didn't come. So many of these young men did not have the family. My mother came and went back and forth with this hospital, and one day when she was coming back for treatment, one of the women visitors, I don't know who she was visiting on that ward, but it couldn't have been an age patient. It wasn't all aids.

It was another adjacent wing for other people, and so she must have been part of that. But she happened to be at the nursing station, and as my mother went by, she said, well, if you ask me, this disease has one thing going for it. It's killing all the right people, and so you know, I didn't say anything to her because I was just so consumed, you know, with my mother being back in the hospital and want to start anything that I memorized that killing all the right people saying and I knew I was going to write a show about that because I wanted to strangle her, and so I did. And that show turned out to be the one that we did with Tony Goldwin, you know, and we got a lot of attention for it and that it helped them, you know, helped some people in the medical community, you know, change their minds about things.

We had to transfer my mother eventually to the Sherman Oaks Burn Center because they became a hospital that was friendly to AIDS patients. And you know, the day my mother got here, the nurse of Swampy Ambulance and hugged her. It was unbelievable. And so that was a very good thing, you know, that happened. But anyway, so I was so far behind on write crist that when we started finally filming, I wrote the script that week.

And this went on for the first year. I mean I wrote the script every weekend, and you know, they are really some of the best scripts, and I think it's true that sometimes you write your best stuff when you're you know, when you have to. And so I wrote it every weekend. On Monday, we had the reading. By Tuesday, we blocked the show and we taped it on Thursday night on the I edited it and I wrote another one on Saturday and Sunday.

The Messenger came on Sunday night, because you know, back then we were still using paper pype scripts. So that went on and I ended up writing I think about I don't know, maybe one hundred and thirty of the shows. But I really, you know, some of the people who I tried to I never had. I never really run a writing table. I'm just not that kind of writer.

I hate that because I want to help other writers, and I have helped other writers get started, but I don't too while sitting at a table, you know, saying things that loud. So I tried to give out scripts, but because it was a Southern show and it was so specific, it wasn't it didn't work very well. I mean, I never put my name on a script that someone else wrote, even if I rewrote it entirely. And I also felt like I was passing that on because Larry Gilbert had done that for me. I was teaching school in Watts when I met him.

I didn't know anything about comedy writing, really, I just knew that Mary Kaine, I'd written a spec script and who wanted to write. Well, you know, he completely rewrote us and then they forget to send me his scripts in and we get nominated for Emmy's and he was so gracious, and so I'd learned that from him. I thought, I will never put my name on a script, even if I rewrite it totally. And I did not. But I could not find anybody until a young woman named Pam Norris came along, and she said she was from Atlanta.

She was very brainy, you know, perfect sat had gone to Harvard at sixteen, and she was funny. Pam really was a godsend and she started, you know, writing for the show, and that helped a lot. We really never had a writing staff, you know, we just didn't do that. But she was an enormous help and a really a really you know, gifted writer, and I was so appreciative of her. But that's how, you know, that's how we did designing Women in the Pass was great.

You know, they never really complained about that because they loved the scripts and it was really fun until it wasn't you know nothing. Really, she had a very trying emotional period on the show for whatever reason. I've never exchanged acrossword with anyone in the cast, including her, but she did feel that when she gained weight, and I don't you know, it would be to her to tell you where she got this idea, but that she was going to be let go because of her way. And I would tell her every week, Dona, no one cares what you weigh. I could not care less what you weigh.

I think it's even more interesting, you know, for a beauty queen to be dealing with this, And I will write a show for you about it, on and on that it. You know, I think it was just a lot of things that had remained that had not been taken care of, you know, before designing when it started and anyway, so that became a very very trying period for the show and for her, and well, eventually, you know, she we had to let her go, and I still, you know, I hate it, and she and I are friends to this day, and you know, we we can laugh about it now, but she has details that she'll tell you, and you know, like like the royal family will say, recollections may vary, but you know, I just I love her, and I you know, I don't I'm not mad at her for anything, and I don't think she's mad at us as she was then, but I think she you know, there were a few people around on the crew who ended up being was one person in particular who sold stories to the tabloids, and that may be somebody who was misinforming her of things.

I don't know. I don't know, but it's just something that you know, we've decided it is what it is, and how lucky were we, you know, to have that experience. If only it could have gone no longer, because I think it was one of the great tasts, you know, as the four of them, and even though we had other brilliant, wonderful people come in for me, it never was you know what it was at the beginning without Telta, when you first sold the show. Was it your intention to write all the scripts or did it just sort of evolve into that. Well, you know what, I've had to learn from these mentors of mine, and I wanted to be that mentor.

But I was so you know, between my mom and the show, I just had to get the show done. And when people who would write a script and turn it in, I saw right away for me to rewrite a script, it's harder than for me to write it, you know what I mean. And so I had a number of people who wrote. You know, some of the scripts were they were pretty good, and they were from even talented writers, but they just weren't They didn't you know, they weren't Southern. None of the writers were Southern until Pam, and they really didn't get the women's voices right.

And so I just started writing them myself. I think I wrote about the first maybe forty eight or something. I don't know. My Alan Crow, who's been my assistant for thirty five years, he knows everything about designing women. He is the institutional memory of designing women.

I have to call him to ask him what did I mean when I wrote? And you know, he's just wonderful. And he was a school teacher who was in the audience every week, you know, and he laughed. Now, you know, I could have been a serial killer, and you gave me a chance to like work for the show because I was in the audience every week. Most people would call the police that I just left him.

And he's so funny himself. He's a writer too, and he's written some wonderful plays. But anyway, he's still with me, and I just adore him and he knows why I did that. You know that I just had to do it. It was necessity for it, you know.

And then after my mom passed away, you know, I did try to hire more writers and things, but honestly, I can say it never really completely fit the bill, you know, until Pam came and one of the writers. One of the teams on the show was Max Munchnik and David his partner who went on to do Well and Grace, and you know, they were wonderful writers we could tell, and of course they went on and proved themselves beyond anything. So when I say this, you know, nobody fit the bill. It wasn't really a lack of talent. It was just, you know, the Southern terrain, and especially the Southern female terrain.

I think it's hard for a lot of people who didn't grow up in that atmosphere and in that zeitgeist, and so it was really just a question of that. And then after five years I went on to Evening Shade and I just contributed, you know, periodically. You know, Pam turned out some brilliant scripts and so so there is a mixture of writing on it. I ended up doing the same thing on Evening Shade for the first year and the same thing on Heart Sapphire for most of those shows, just because it was easier that we never had a writing table. I would just assign writers a script to give them a chance, you know, and often they were good.

And I didn't rewrite people nearly as much on Evening Shade and Hearts of Fire as I did on Designing Women. Well, they also had a lot of template then, right like, even though it was a very different show, yes, once they got going, you know, there, it was pretty apparent what the show was about. Now everybody acted and talked, you know, And if I went over there after I went to Evening Shade, if I went over there and they were like getting out of control. I remember the one show they were all in antebellum dresses, sliding down their railing and stuff, and I was just like, what is going on? I was like, the house mother has been on vacation, like this show is so out of control, But I don't know, it all worked out.

It all worked out, and you know, the friendship still go on to this day. I mean, I'm really really close losing Dixie about killed me. She came to my little town for the foundation in paper Bluff with her pianist. She put on such a show there, lying on the piano, singing all of her songs. I just remember Dixie singing, you know, I get a kick out of you and bewitsh bothered and bewildered, and looking at a couple of these really redneck brothers in my hometown who were in the front row, and they just just staring at her, you know, just gogglied, and she's in that.

You know, it's the same show she performed at the Carlisle, And I thought, this is such a great cultural coming together of all these deer hunters in my little pound coming to see Dixie Carter or you know, perform her Carlisle act. But it really worked. And then Leslie Jordan came and oh my gosh, you know, my town has not really fully evolved on LGBTQ things. And I speak my mind in the paper, and they tolerate it, and that's just the way it is. But when Leslie Jordan came, I didn't know how sold out all the little low church ladies laughing there, you know what's off.

And the next day the headline in the paper was about Leslie was born and fell into his mother's high heels and how hilarious he was. Well, you know, that's an LGBTQ thing. I mean, Leslie was old fashioned and he did those jokes that I understand why some members of the gay community don't love it. But you know, I think in his own way, he was a brand, you know. And when he tells that story of his military dads saying Leslie was twirling baton in the front yard, you know, and his dad would say, Leslie, I'm going to pay you to twirl in the backyard.

I'm sorry, that's funny, you know, because I mean that's just like a Norman Lear kind of kind of joke. You know, Leslie was such a transitional think here in that way. Who else came, Well, Lily, oh my god, Lily Tomlin came and she just brought the house down, you know, she did her act so all of the you know, Designing Women has been well supported and the friendships go on. Gene and I never really got to know each other that much. I mean we got to know each other, but never really close on the show because we were always so busy.

And you know, anyway, we have recently grown quite close, you know, after Richard died, and we've helped each other during the pandemic and so that's been lovely. Jenna Carter, Dixie's daughter, just Adore and she and I are very close. And Annie I just talked to. They give me their old designer purses every year because we have a thing called Power of the Purse in my hometown. And every year when I call in August, they go, no, you're going to take my Prada.

I know they hate to hear from me, but anyway, they've all been great, and we started. Our spiritual home is in Little Rock, Arkansas, where the Villa Marie is, which is the Sugar Baker building, the exterior that's used in the show. Yeah, and we would go back there and have Bill and Hillary where Bill Clinton was just governor. Then I know I should say President first lady, but anyway, I'm just going to say Bill and Hillard because it's easier, and we would they would have these wonderful parties for us and everybody, and the Little Rock it's really you know, adopted Designing Women. It is really Little Rock show.

Even my brother in law, doctor Dan Thomason, who's not comtists in a Little Rock, but he was always in a lot of plays and everything. When Reggie macdalls and Susanne's accountant absconded with all of her money, I asked Danny to come out and play that role, and he was so good, and he even got offered a role on alf from being on that, but he said, no, I had to go back. I'm an optometrist anyway. And then, you know, we didn't have guest stars because I didn't want to do that. I just always felt that was kind of cheap, you know, to have a guest star on to get attention.

But the only big guest star we ever really had was Dolly and she came on the show as seen Angel tonight. She had her little girl, and so that was thrilling. I always regretted we didn't have Elizabeth Taylor, but we heard from the pedigree of Designing Women is astounding in terms of you know, we heard from everybody. We heard. The first one came from Oprah.

She quoted the lines and actually it was a telegram which I saved, and she was quoting a line from something that Dixie said about to Delta, explaining something about, you know, in the end, all that really matters is what was truly said and truly felt how we treated one another. And she liked that line, and so she wrote me about it. And then we just heard from everybody, with Martina Neverrachel Loova wrote me a lovely letter. You know, we heard from a lot of Ray Charles loved the show. Prince I heard from Princess Die.

I know, that's crazy. It was. It was just, you know. And then Elizabeth Taylor was actually calling Delta on her own saying I have to play your mother, and I think she saw the resemblance of them physically, you know, she thought would not be fun and to come on the show. So that to regret, you know that that never happened.

I would have liked to see that episode for sure. Oh, I know they would have been so they would have been funny together, They really would have. They were. They actually had a lot of the same personality from what I can discern. You know, Elizabeth Taylor always seemed a little fragile, but yet she was so strong, you know, the way she stood up for AIDS and for her friends.

And Delta's like that too. That's amazing. So what other like, what are some of your favorite episodes that you remember fondly for one reason or another. Well, obviously the one with my brother in law because I'm very close to him and I thought he was hilarious in that. One of my favorite episodes is something called Reservations for eight when the four couples go away together.

That is nice the show. That is my all favorite episode. It's my mother's favorite episode. That's my sister's favorite episode. Oh, I'm so happy because I've never heard everybody always says they shoot fat women or the beauty contest.

I love those two one. Yeah, it's so perfect. It's it's so perfect in terms of the for lack of a better term, the battle of the sexes in the way that it is. Yeah, I love it, Yes, in the way that it just you know, both sides are stating their case and and they're all mad at each other, and at the end they go and they end up on the dance floor and everything. I mean, it was I love that episode so much.

So it was a good male female what we've been what we started out talking about about, you know, Southern men and women. And I love that even when they thought it was an unpleasant you know, when when Dick gives that big speech about how you know, I mean men have done all the raping and the pillaging and created all the mayhem and blah blah blah, you know in the world. So if you aren't happy with the way things turned out, you have no one to blame it yourself, you know. And then Hal gets up and goes, oh, yeah, well let me tell you about women, and she goes, what because they're always late? Because he has nothing else and they just said it so beautifully, and that whole show is just I don't know, there was just that was kind of when you know, love was in the air on the stage and everybody falling in love, you know, in real life, And so that was just a really fun show to do.

I'd love the I've love some of just really goofy shows, you know, even Julia gets her head stuck on a fence. I mean, just some of the silly things they did. And you know, we always resented if anybody ever says we were broad, because we never did anything that it couldn't really happen. You know, we made sure that it could really happen. And if people go, oh, that's crazy Delta Berg caring around that gun and having that pig, not really.

You know, if you live in the South, you know, I know a couple of people who I know a woman who had an AK forty seven and I know a woman who had a pig for a pet, and it just happened. It's just something that happens. Yeah, and we do put our crazy people on their front porch. I mean, that is for sure that the South. The North embraces therapy and the South embraces you know, just just showing it.

Just yeah, he's crazy, you know, and we love her and then they think it's funny and they laugh at the crazy things she says, whoever it is. And the whole point of the show, I guess, was to say that, you know, we're not that different. I mean, and I just thought, what is this big thing of looking down on the South. And so you know, I have a play now, which we can talk about in a little bitter whenever you want. But you know, called designing Women, and it's called the Big Split, and it's about you know, the whole country being really cut in half over all of these issues.

And it happens at sugar Bakers, and it's today. The women are depicted as they would be today, you know, and everybody's had enough and everybody's finally seeing who who one another really are. So anyway, Dixie has the line in the play where she tells somebody, she says, you know, I just never understood why the North looks down on the South. You know, when you get right down to it, we are really just like New Yorkers, only in a good mood. And I think that is so true.

You know that Southerners just, I mean, they're very self effacing, and they're very funny, and they really admit when they had just you know, gotten it right between the eyes, but they laugh about it. It's just a Southern trade. But but just for pounds for pound, you know, intellect and curiosity about the world, uh, and talent and you know, being erade great storytellers, you know, I mean, we don't we we don't have to about it anybody. So that was really. I guess that more than anything was the real reason I wanted to do Designing Women, you know, was to was to show that.

And in particular, I think Dixie is the one who carried that torch, you know, and did it did it so well. Yes. Now, I heard a rumor that Dixie Carter was more conservative and that she made a deal with you that every Julia Rant she would get to sing. Well, let me say that Dixie was more conservative, but by that I mean Dixie voted for Nelson Rockefeller. I don't think you would like Dixie Carter, Yeah, voting for Donald And certainly Dixie Carter was a giant champion of the gay community.

Yes, I would tell her. Yeah. I would always bribe her and say you can sing how and she taks them very religious, you know, And I would say you can sing, how great thou art, you know, if you'll say this other stuff, and she'd go, okay. Dixie, she had such respect for writers. And she's the one who really stayed the closest to me on Shoe Night.

You know, she was always coming to me. She had no ego because if I did direct, I would be very direct with the actors. I don't coddle actors. I mean, I'm very pleasant, you know, I haven't. I think I have my mother's temperament.

I've never yelled at anyone. But you know, I say, I say, listen, this is what I mean by this. And if they can't get it right away, and this, I know Sag will hate me for saying this, but you know I have given them line readings because it's just a shortcut and we're in a hurry, you know, And I say this how I hear it, and if you don't like it, don't use it, you know, but if this helps you, this is how I hear it in my head because I've said every line twenty times before I wrote it. And Dixie was the one who loved that, and she would come over, you know, she had a long speech and she'd say right in here, right in here. But of course, I'm not trying to imply that I guided those speeches, because they were all hundred percent Dixie.

But I'm just saying, and she hit a little, you know, corner where she wasn't sure I could fill it in for her, and she goes, thank you, thank you, you know, and then she just nail it. Exactly like we just talked about it, but the whole speech was always hers and you know she more than anyone, but well, she and Jean they were like to the letter, you know, like you wrote it. But they all were very good about that. I have to say I was blessed. I know a lot of actors, you know, they had their own stuff and they improvised, and you know, I worked really hard on the speeches and stuff, and so I you know, there is there is a melodic element to it, and there's a rhythm and I didn't want that broken and if we could help it, and the cast really respected that, and I think that contributed to the overall you know, appreciation of the show.

That it was very aerudite, and it was the language was you know, well regarded, and I think people like that. Yeah. Yeah, it was a really beautiful balance of like, you know, sort of amazing dialogue and then that verbal, lovely verbal banter, and and then I like the physical comedy of you know, oh yeah, we could be silly. Yeah I'm not talking about that part because they probably did throw in some stuff there, but I don't remember a lot of physical comedy. But they were all good at it.

You know, they're just good. I mean, there's a reason I know Delta was retired, but you know, Gene and Nanny just go on and on because they're just good at what they do. They're so good. Dixie Carter was really great at the physical comedy. Yeah, you know, when she had her panty hose TechEd in her pants.

I mean, now that's kind of an old stereotype joke, but I think she was. We were one of the first to do that, because that really happened to me at a big governor's event in Arkansas. I was very humiliating, and oh yeah, I stood up and took a bow when I was introduced from the stage. Oh yeah, and the people around me were gasping. And when I sat down, my husband whispered.

You know, I think, I think something's wrong back then, and I you know, I just stepped through it. Oh my god, it was just pantyhose, and you know, and I did rub that my top and oh god, it was so horrible. So then I came back and oh, I used everything in my real life for the show because I was always desperate. But anyway, yeah, I think they were all good physical comedians too, and you know, I want to say Alice Ghostly was so brilliant on the show and we all adored her and my god, she got a huge laugh on every line. And me, Shack, I cannot You've got to have Delta on and have her talk about her relationship with me Shaq, because they just became a couple of you know, peas in a pod.

They were inseparable. They were as close in real life as they were on the show. And you know, no matter, I mean, you couldn't do this show today because she was so racially inappropriate with him, you know, just saying horribly racist things that were said with love. And you really, you know, you've got to really understand the South and understand where she was coming from to keep liking her, you know, because she really loved Anthony and he the character understood that, and me Shack understood it. How a facist beauty queen, you know, can traverse that very tricky area.

I love the episode where they're stuck in the snowstorm on their lips. Yes, oh my gosh, that's where she said really horrible and really his place is to sleep in the car and needs this They got it. Mercy on your soul. I mean, she treated him so badly, but she loved him so much. But that is the narcissism, you know, Susannes, and she really was a lot like Scarlet in that way.

But yeah, me, Shack was a terrible loss to all of us. And just I used to get letters at the start because people didn't like it that Anthony had been in prison and I'm just doing another stereotype. And I would always say, if anybody in the press would ask, you know, I wanted him to be a stereotype. I wanted you know, I took school in Watch. I knew a lot of young black men, and I wanted to show a black man who had been in prison and let him emerge from the stereotype you know victorians, and he did.

I mean, he ended up being a partner in the business. So I enjoyed that trajectory. Yeah, something else you don't really see on television at all, that kind of character who makes this way in the world after getting out of prison. I think people are afraid. Yeah, they're afraid to you know, like right now, if you're going to have a gay a person, an actor of color, or a gay or a trans person, it would be very hard to not have them have a positive role, you know what I mean, And that's really cheating that community, you know.

I mean they should be allowed to be anything that I think most writers would be terrified to have. You know, it's really hard to find black villains, even unless it's an all black movie, you know, because people just don't want to be part of that. I don't know. We have so far to get as to, you know, and all and working out all of these things, indeed, but little by little, I guess we get there. That's something that I coined.

So don't try to reuse that, Okay, I won't. It's good Or you like to see me a quarter? Okay? Every time you say it differ. Oh, I would love to tell people to please go and see the play.

Can I do that? Yes? Yes, so let's talk. Yes. It was done at Horizon Theater, one of my favorite theaters in Atlanta.

You know Lisa Adler. Do you know Lisa? I don't know her, but I know of her if you because you're from Atlanta, right, I'm from Atlanta. Oh my gosh. I try to go every time I can when I'm back.

Well, you know, we're what we're experiencing is the directors of these theaters are almost uniformly so excited to do designing Women to Play, but their boards are often conservative Republicans who do not want to present this material, and so it has been challenge, you know. But now we're moving, and now we're really going because the play has built a reputation. And we started in the middle of winter in the middle of COVID in Fattville, Arkansas, because that is where you know, it's a beautiful, beautiful campus and you know, and again Harry and I are from Arkansas, really and Faettville has one of the most beautiful theaters, Theater Squared, run by Bob Ford, and it's just gorgeous, and they wanted to do it.

We had told them about it and they said, oh, we'd love to have it, because again Arkansas kind of is designing women's home. So we started there and they were looked up worried because it is still Arkansas, you know, it's still those Republican and now Sarah Huckaby's the governor now, so you can imagine. But anyway, I mean, we started and it started building, and it just got bigger and bigger until it was sold out, sold out, sold out, and you know, COVID was raging. There were blizzards and it broke the box office record since their inception. So next we went to Little Rock to the artists are wrapped and Will Trice.

So we went there again, middle of COVID, middle of winter. This was six months later. Now that's been there for like thirty years. Broke the box office records. When we left there, it was sold out every night, so word starting to spread a little bit.

Then we go to Horizon. The same thing happened there. That was a really good test in Atlanta. I mean those actors. We had one actress there who was really chatteling, Delta Burke, and I mean she was just on fire.

We want to bring her to other venues. Then we went to Bowling Green, Kentucky. Same thing. The director loved to play, was worried sick because everybody there's really on their boards Republican. They were for it.

We did it. They came to the play. The lady who was most against it not only loved it so much, she started bringing people back. So we felt like, you know, we're kind of bringing if people will have a sense of humor about it. We're kind of bringing people together.

You know, we only had three people I believe, walk out since the play started. And I don't even know why they came. They must have come to the miss or something. But the cast is so interesting. The original cast insisted, I would say four people in the cast had been cut off from their families because and so we had Carmen Cusack.

Carmen played Julia. I don't know if you know, but she's quite the star on Broadway. She did Steve Martin's Bright Star. She just was nominated for it. Tony also, she was wonderful as Dixie.

And then we've had Catherine Lanassa ever since, who's just been killing it. So the next time is Dallas. I think it's it is political. I mean, we didn't shy away from it. I'll just tell you the storyline, I mean, brief briefly.

You know, Charlene comes down with COVID and they all get it, and this is the starts in twenty twenty and they're all quarantined. And during the quarantine they realized that Suzanne had sex with Donald Trump at a beauty pageant and and it was where she played a judge. And you know it's pas I mean not played a judge. She was a judge card. So you know, of course all hell breaks loose, and you know it's cataclysmic.

I mean, it's like, you know, the end of the world has happened, and they decide they can't resolve it. They just cannot resolve it. They can't get over it. Julia Sugar Baker cannot get over it, and they end up they're going to split up, and it's just about the coming together again, you know how they how they sort it out that anyway, It is really funny, it really is. And I mean tons of lasts, and I just know it would be successful in LA for television.

Is there a reboot in the process or they could you tell? Yeah? Maybe? So you know, we just I said, okay, you know what, I'm just going to write it as a play. CBS was so wonderful.

Jeff Sagansky and Howard Stringer who was the chairman, Jeff was the president. They just tell me every week, you know when what I was telling you before, the reason I got to do all that. They never knew what I was doing from one week to the next. They told all the censors and everybody to note. People just leave me alone.

They let me write anything I wanted to write for the whole seven years. It will never happen again to me or to anyone else. And I don't even know why it happened. It was a magical gift that I thought, if I get into playwriting, I'll kind of get that back, you know. And so that's that's what's happened.

You know. I'm just writing it the way I want. And I think we're slowly, you know, showing that all these conservative I didn't know so many conservative people were the money suppliers to the theaters. You know, that they approved the money. I didn't realize that.

So that's been the problem. But yes, so now I think what might happen is that we'll see how the play goes, you know, and the play, I don't know if it'll we'll have a life after the election, So that could happen. That could happen anyway. You guys have been so great. Thank you for letting me stop stout.

Boss. It's I don't see a shrink. I probably should, but now I know I don't need to. I just feel like I was lying on the sofa all afternoon anyway, thank you so much, thank you for letting me do it. It was an honor and I love what you're doing.

It's so needed. And really, after this conversation and hearing you guys, hearing your response and then what your thoughts are, you know, I just feel like we've got to get the issues that we talked about. We've got to find a way to make them bigger. That chief the spirit of our fight going. Yeah, because we're down and out right now.

I feel it too, So thank you for you know, giving me a little platform to say all that. I really appreciate it. Well appreciate you. Yes, and your philanthropy is it the Claudia Foundation? All of our programs where we send the girls to college and we have a big reading program, is the Designing Women Foundation.

I found out people were more likely to give me money if it was the Designing Accountation and they would I don't know, Claudiet, what was she like whatever? I just thought, Yeah, I mean, mother wouldn't mind if I could, you know, if it makes it more palatable to people. Anyway, thank you so much. Having weekend, what's left of it? And yes, I will yeah a little later when I have something new to say, but I would love to come back.

Okay, absolutely any time. Thank you so very much. Bye, Okay, guys, thank you, bye bye bye bye bye. In today's audiography, you can learn more about designing Women at designing Women Online and also the Designing Women Foundation. And in our description there will be links to articles written by Linda in The Hollywood Reporter talking about sexual assault in Hollywood, les Moonvez and how her trajectory at CBS took a nose dive as soon as Moonvez came to power.

Please help us make the show by going to Patreon, dot com slash Eighties tv Ladies and we are on Instagram, Twitter and all the social channels at Eighties TV Ladies listeners. We have a very special holiday present for all of you. We are dropping a bonus episode this Friday, December first on a new TV holiday movie from Lifetime. It's called Ladies of the Eighties, A Diva's Christmas, and our special guest for this bonus episode is the co writer of A Diva's Christmas, who also wrote on The Golden Girls, Gilmore Girls, Roseanne and many other amazing eighties, nineties and two thousand TV Ladies shows. Don't miss it.

It's going to be spectacular. A holiday extravaganza of a show, Sharon, everybody loves an extravaganza, and you're really gonna love this one. And we've never dropped an episode on a Friday. I don't know what's going to happen. It's all just going to be wonderful.

Yeah, because we just talked to Linda Blood with thumbson, So everything is better now. Don't miss it. As always, we hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous old and new shows to watch, all of which will bring us closer toward being an amazing Ladies of the twenty first century. See you next. Time's Pretty to the City the World Night, and here's a little December treat.

Stay tuned for the trailer and a very special clip from Ladies of the Eighties, a Diva's Christmas Lifetime holiday movie starring Lonnie Anderson, Morgan Fairchild, Linda Gray, Donna Mills, and Nicolae Sheridan. Enjoy long time popular daytime soap opera The Great Lakes is getting a little holiday reprieve Exquisite, a Lifetime original movie. This is gonna be great to for of us together. She's bored by the legendary divas. If she's doing the show, I'm not together.

It last fast on your face lifts, Ladies, it's going to be a bumpy weekend. I'm styged that you're available to direct this. Are you two an item of friends from college with benefits? No? No, you don't always get to choose who you fall for.

Listen to her, She's had five husbands and I wouldn't trade any one of them. Well, maybe that last one. Ladies of the Eighties. Adiva's Christmas premiere Saturday, December, second of eight hirt of It's a wonderful lifetime. Ladies, now that you're all here, I want to introduce you to direct and now hi lovely bone structure.

She seems fucky, terrible worderbe female forward of him to hire? Okay, ladies, Nell is incredibly talented and honestly, we are very excited to have her on this project. Oh actually I'm the lucky you want to be working with you ladies, all legends and your own right. And of course Alex, who's writing really pops. It's so witty and smart and yet relatable.

Are you two an item no friends from college, best best friends from college, well, I mean back then, best friends with benefits. No no, no, no no, nothing like these strictly professional engagement ladies. Now I've had now because she's amazingly talented. You said that I did, right, I mean she she is wonderful and awesome, and I trust her, and you know, I really like working with her. We do well together.

We gell tell well, is his lushing? I think he's blush anyhow,