Early career

In 1974, as part of winning Miss Florida, Burke appeared on the ABC-TV show Bozo the Clown, filmed in Orlando, Florida. A 2001 episode of Lost Treasures of NFL Films presented film footage, taken by Lewis Bice, of her appearance as Miss Florida at the World Football League's World Bowl that same year.

In 1980, Burke portrayed the role of the second Bonnie Sue Chisholm in the CBS western miniseries, The Chisholms. Burke spent a year on Filthy Rich in 1982 playing the wily young widow, Kathleen Beck. After that, she played female football team owner Diane Barrow on 1st & Ten from 1984 to 1986.

Designing Women

In 1986, Burke was cast as Suzanne Sugarbaker in the CBS sitcom Designing Women; she left 1st and Ten in order to appear on the show. Designing Women was created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who had previously cast Burke in her show Filthy Rich. The show was set at an interior design firm in Atlanta headed by four women, and Burke was one of the show's four female leads. (Dixie Carter, another of the leads, had been the lead actress on Filthy Rich.) The show struggled in the ratings, and was even briefly cancelled after its first year,^[9] but in 1989 began to receive respectable ratings after being paired with the sitcom Murphy Brown. Burke became the show's breakout star,^[10] and earned two consecutive nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1990 and 1991; she was the only lead female cast member of the show to be nominated. (Alice Ghostley received a nomination for Supporting Actress in a Comedy in 1992, for her recurring role as Bernice Clifton, while Meshach Taylor received one in 1989 for Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.)

In 1990, Burke publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the show on a televised interview with Barbara Walters and other media outlets. She argued on Entertainment Tonight that there was a labor dispute, and actors were often forced to work over 15 hours per day, with executives even blocking the doors to keep actors on set. She also said that Dixie Carter, who had once been her close friend and maid of honor at her wedding to Gerald McRaney, was not speaking to her as Carter sided with her bosses. At the end of the fifth season of Designing Women in 1991, Burke was fired from the show due to her contentious relations with Carter and the Thomasons.^[2]

1990s

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. The series was cancelled after one season. 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.

It took more than a decade for Burke and Carter to reconcile, but they did so when Burke guest-starred in an episode of Family Law, on which Carter was a regular cast member.

Weight issues

Since the early 1990s, Burke's weight has been a subject of discussion in the tabloid press.^[2][11] Her struggles with weight, depression, and eating disorders stretch back to her pageant days in the early 1970s. She became a much-parodied figure in the press due to the media's incessant obsession with her weight, including in a skit on Saturday Night Live, wherein Leon Phelps from The Ladies Man has a sexual fixation with her. In 1989, Burke asked Thomason to write an episode addressing her weight. The episode, "They Shoot Fat Women, Don't They?", had Suzanne Sugarbaker going to her 15-year high school reunion and having her feelings hurt after hearing disparaging remarks about her weight. Her performance on this episode is said to have led to her receiving her first Emmy nomination as Best Actress.^[12]

Later career

Burke has been a leading actress in a number of television films, and had a supporting role in the Mel Gibson film What Women Want (2000).^[11]

In the early 2000s, she co-starred with David Alan Grier on the sitcom DAG; she had lost much of her excess weight for the role after being diagnosed with diabetes.

Burke made her Broadway debut in September 2003, when she starred as Mrs. Meers in the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie.^[13] She was the third actress to play the role in the production, after Harriet Harris and Terry Burrell. She played the role until February 2004, before being succeeded by her Designing Women co-star Dixie Carter.^[14] Burke then played the role of Truvy in the original Broadway production of Steel Magnolias, playing the role for the shows entire four-month run from April 4 - July 31, 2005.^[15]

She also played Bella Horowitz during a five-episode arc on Boston Legal as a former flame of William Shatner's character, Denny Crane, in season three.^[16]

Burke appeared in a Hallmark Channel film, Bridal Fever, which aired February 2, 2008.

In March 2012, Burke was cast in the ABC comedy pilot Counter Culture.^[17] However, after Burke fell on the set, production of the pilot was suspended and it was not picked up to series.