A New Delta Dawns

Delta Burke is making her singing debut in ABC’s new sitcom “Delta,” playing an aspiring country singer, belting out those lonely, heartbroken, lovesick lyrics.

“I never thought of me as a singer,” she admits. “The only time I ever sang before was for comic effect on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ‘Designing Women’ and a (TV) movie I did called ‘Dayo.’ The only reason I decided to do it now was I didn’t want to be afraid any more.

“We figure she’s an aspiring singer, so I don’t have to be perfect. I thought I’d record it in a studio and lip-sync. But the producers want me to sing live. Part of me likes doing it live, but it’s also terrifying.”

In the new Thursday night comedy, premiering this week, she plays a woman who dumps her ne’er-do-well husband to seek her dream as a country-Western singer in Nashville. She ends up as a cocktail waitress in a bar called The Green Lantern, where she performs on amateur night. The show also stars Earl Holliman, Beth Grant, Gigi Rice and Nancy Giles.

“This isn’t the usual stuff I’m doing,” she says. “Singing is so different. I’m also learning to produce. I’m an executive producer. It was like with my first movie ‘Charleston,’ when I didn’t know anything about the camera.”

She’s also a blonde, a bold, brassy, bosomy blonde.

Burke, a former Miss Florida and Miss America contestant, appears to have put on a few more pounds since the original controversy over her weight. That began several years ago when the tabloids zeroed in on her as she added the pounds. It ended with a feud with the producers of “Designing Women” and her dismissal last year from her role as sassy, self-centered Suzanne Sugarbaker.

“I’ve never been happy with the way I look,” she says. “But I’ve been this way four or five years. I’m used to it, like I got used to the tabloids jumping on me. In a way, it’s been a blessing. When I put on weight people began listening to me. It gave me a voice.

“People looked at my acting rather than what I looked like. My acting became better. Suzanne became more interesting. People began to identify with me. In a lot of ways it changed my life for the good. Still, in spite of all of that, I’d rather look like Sharon Stone. People can get annoyed at you for putting on weight.”

Burke says she sees her new show and her new look as a life change she felt she needed after the turmoil that led up to her leaving “Designing Women.”

“I wanted time off to recover,” she says. “It’s never going to be understood because there were so many slants, so many untruths. It was very intense, like an awful divorce. I wanted to get a new perspective, which is one of the reasons I went blond. I wanted to separate myself from the past and start over. Now I think I’m clicking. All my circuits are plugged in.”

She flashes that impish grin that made her so popular in such series as “Designing Women,” “Filthy Rich” and “First and Ten.”

“I’m starting out on a brand-new life,” she says.

What was the reaction to the blond hair from her husband, Gerald McRaney, the star of CBS’ “Major Dad?”

“Mac is so tactful,” she says. “I was still in the process of having it colored. He opened the door and said, ‘What a wonderful job.’ I didn’t like the color at the time. I don’t think he liked it either. Now that it’s finished I think he likes me as a blonde--but he likes me as a brunette better.”

As much as she was battered by the tabloids and as unhappy as she was over the “Designing Women” controversy, Burke feels there was a bright side.

“The whole fracas over ‘Designing Women’ made me popular,” she says. “People were rooting for me. All that stuff in the tabloids was like road kill. People didn’t want to look but they did. And that in turn made them tune in ‘Designing Women.’ I’ve gotten so used to it now if the tabloids stopped writing about me I’d miss it.”

“Delta” premieres Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. and moves to its regular time slot Thursday at 8 p.m. on ABC.