Daily Inspiration Quote by Delta Burke

Delta Burke’s line lands like a perfectly timed hairpin turn: a confession disguised as a joke, and a joke that quietly demands to be taken seriously. When she says, “All the nice things about Suzanne are me,” she’s doing what actors are constantly asked not to do - collapse the distance between performer and character. Then she snaps it back into place with the kicker: “All the things that aren’t nice, that was just the writing.” It’s a laugh line, but it’s also a boundary.

The intent is defensive, and strategically so. Suzanne Sugarbaker, Burke’s character on Designing Women, was famous for being vain, cutting, and occasionally cruel in the way sitcoms love: funny because it’s “too much,” safe because it’s fictional. Burke’s quip anticipates the audience’s lazy translation of character into person. It’s a preemptive strike against being tagged “difficult” or “mean” - labels that stick harder to women in comedy, especially when their characters take up space.

The subtext is labor politics. Actors are the face of choices they didn’t always make, but they’re the ones who get stopped in airports and judged at dinner parties. By crediting herself for Suzanne’s warmth while outsourcing the nastiness to “the writing,” Burke asserts authorship over her own public self without sounding bitter. It’s also a sly reminder that “writing” is never neutral; it’s a set of decisions shaped by a room, a network, and a culture that loves outspoken women as long as it can pretend they’re not real.