DB: No, we met at the end of the first season. I was doing a lot of publicity… Sometimes I would make an appearance and in the limo home start crying and not know why. Then all of a sudden attention was focused on me because the show was picked up and we were getting well known.
Then I met him. He people-oriented me, so everything intensified. Then I was very much out in the spotlight and started to gain weight, which got a lot of attention. That was my Achilles heel. All my life I was always starving myself and trying to stay thin. Then I would react to that and it was a vicious circle. It got to the point where I would just go home or to the set. I was scared and jumpy, looking around for the hidden paparazzi, because pictures would show up in the tabloids and you don't know how they got them. That gets you kind of paranoid. Once they got into the house. If I went to an appearance, it was sort of like hunting season. I would smile and try to be accommodating, but now I was more newsworthy, so they wouldn't stop.
Once, when he had just gotten me the ring, we went out. I'd worked really hard to look good and hoped someone would say something about the ring. It was a feeding frenzy. All that was written was how fat I was. Nothing nice. So I retreated more. I started refusing to make appearances, which was not viewed very well. A lot of pressure was applied to keep making the appearances, and I couldn't handle it.
You had unusual pressures on you constantly.
GM: They just intensified things that were already going on. The paparazzi, the fame and all that other stuff just made it more intense—and more public.
DB: That takes you to such a public place and you're not feeling worthy of that, and you keep trying to find a way to deal with it. Then I started having panic attacks, on set. My whole body would shake, and wailing sounds would come out of me. I look like I'm crazy and I'm not crazy. It was really embarrassing. I was so terrified I was going to have that in front of an audience.
How did you, Mac, deal with this?
GM: I'm looking at this gorgeous, intelligent, incredibly talented woman who is feeling unworthy. It doesn't make any sense! Finally, through educating myself I realized that's what clinical depression is all about. There is no explanation for it. It's just there.
DB: It took me ending up in a hospital, though, for either of us to learn any of that.
GM: And that began with the doctor saying, "OK, here's what you're dealing with." Which is why our whole thing is to get to people who are suffering, even the people like me who are suffering on the sidelines.
Hardly the sidelines.
GM: What I've gone through is nothing. The other day I told Delta, "This was your fight. All I could do was let you know I had your back." This was a battle she had to fight on her own, with her doctor. That's our message. Get to a doctor. Your husband can't fix it, your wife can't fix it, your father can't fix it. They can love you, but not fix it.
DB: And you can't just snap out of it. It's an ongoing process. You can't think, if I just love her more, if I demonstrate it, if she will just listen to reason—which is idiotic because people suffering this are incapable of listening to reason about themselves; to them, it's a foregone conclusion that they're not worthy. You have to have medical attention for it.
Tags:
antidepressant,
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Delta Burke,
depression,
designing women,
emmy award,
extreme state,
fame,
fetal position,
Gerald McRaney,
gm,
grown woman,
heart of the matter,
major dad,
recovery,
sitcom,
suzanne sugarbaker,
unusual story,
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