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That's the word she uses -- "miracle" -- to describe even the most modest success one can have in the world of television.
"My experience in television is that it's miraculous to wind up in a success," says Carter, the longtime Designing Women costar. "That it is to say, as success, I mean a show that gets bought to go on the air. The odds are very great against that happening. Then, if the audience watches in large numbers, that is a greater miracle. And each year that the show remains on the air is even more astounding."
By that standard, there might be no word to adequately capture the remarkable story of Designing Women, the classic sitcom that survived first-season cancellation, ran for seven years (1986-93) and now thrives in reruns.
Same goes for Carter's latest miracle: She co-stars in not one, but two new shows -- and both premiere tonight on CBS.
First comes Ladies Man, a sitcom in which she plays the kind of superficial woman who tries to buy her granddaughters' love with cell phones, cavalierly passing them out the way another grandparent might give away candy. Then comes Family Law, an L.A. Law-style drama in which she plays a larger-than-life attorney with a colorful vocabulary and even more colorful past.
"Who would dream?" Carter says. "When you say that you've got two series pilots, it's still kind of expected that if one of them goes it's a miracle. But CBS bought six new shows and I was in two of them. Your chances are probably better if you go to Las Vegas and throw the dice."
Both shows are skillfully done and have memorable moments, but they have a long way to go before rivaling the dynamic combination of superb writing and acting that made Designing Women one of the great sitcoms of the 1980s.
"It still has a big audience," says Carter, who played Julia Sugarbaker, an opinionated woman with no unexpressed thoughts. "I go out to make speeches or do my cabaret act and people tell me how they still watch the show. Every day. Several times a day. There's just something about it that they can't get enough of."
One obvious strength of the show was the chemistry of the four sassy Southern ladies who ran an Atlanta design firm. It seemed as if each character had been custom built for the actress who played her -- and indeed, that's exactly the way it happened.
There was no elaborate casting process, Carter says. Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the show's creator/producer, had Carter, Annie Potts (as Mary Jo), Delta Burke (Suzanne) and Jean Smart (Charlene) in mind from the start.
Another reason Women stood out: It was and still is one of the most eloquently written shows on TV. It embraced words and ideas, not just jokes -- although it was always quite funny too.
Says Smart: "Linda basically said, 'I don't care what these ladies do for a living. I just want the four of them in a room together for a series.' That's really all the show was about: four intelligent women talking about anything and everything."
"Designing Women might have been one of the wordiest comedies on television," Carter says. "I mean, we had real talking to do, long speeches. We had 50-page scripts, whereas I believe most situation comedy scripts are less than 40. Of course, it's okay to have fatter scripts as long as you have something to say."
Miraculously, when it came to saying something meaningful and memorable, Designing Women usually succeeded.
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