“I appreciate every single day”

Actress Dana Delany, 68, is completely focused on her work, not her fame. “I’m at a point in my career – or maybe I’ve always been like this, it’s just my nature – where I’m not really into publicity. I just love the work, and we live in a culture now where it’s so much about how many followers you have, and I just don’t care about that. That’s not why I act.” Her TV work includes roles in the popular shows China Beach And Desperate Housewivesand she stars alongside Sylvester Stallone in Paramount+’s crime drama Tulsa Kingwhich returns with Season 2 on September 15. Delany tells AARP how a China Beach co-star helped her with her current role, what it’s like working with Stallone and why she thinks she has a bit of psychic powers.

The interview has been edited for length And Clarity.

Your Tulsa King The character owns a horse farm and is a trained rider. Did you have any experience with horses when you took on the role?

I love horses, but I’m not a good rider. In the first season I really wanted to overcome that and feel comfortable with the horses. So I did a little horse therapy with my old friend Chloe Webb, who China Beach with me. She has now become an equine therapist – that is, she uses horses for emotional therapy, with veterinarians with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] or people who are afraid of horses. She’s a great therapist… and it was kind of mind-blowing what you can heal in an hour. And it was very emotional, and I’m actually very comfortable with horses now. This season they haven’t let me ride much. My character is more connected to Sly [Stallone].

What is it like working with Sylvester Stallone?

I have to say, it was an unexpected pleasure working with Sly. He is truly phenomenal. He works so hard. He is so well prepared. He has many different tasks – he produces [the show]he rewrites a lot, he’s in almost every scene – and it’s really important to him. And he edits and he looks at the dailies. He does everything. That’s his way, his nature. On top of that, he’s incredibly spontaneous. He’s not a dictator. That’s how I like to work. So, yes, we have the scene and we have the script and it’s great, but can we play with it a little bit? He’s up for playing. And people will see from what we’ve done this season that we’ve had so much fun. There’s a lot of laughter and it’s this great game between us of keeping up with each other. He’s constantly inventing something new and thinking up something new and throwing it at me and then I throw it back. It’s been a lot of fun.

Delany plays horse ranch owner Margaret Devereaux in the Paramount+ series “Tulsa King.”

Brian Douglas/Paramount+

Season 1 of Tulsa King was filmed in Oklahoma and the final season in Atlanta. How did you like filming outside of the usual LA recording studio?

I really enjoyed Oklahoma. I had never been to Oklahoma before and found it surprisingly modern and hip and kind of unusual. [Oklahoma City] has great art deco, which fascinated me. And surprisingly, I had never shot in Atlanta before, so that was new to me. It’s really hard to navigate the city because it’s so spread out, a bit like LA, and you kind of have to figure out which neighborhood you want to be in. I would say what I liked most was the foliage. There are incredible trees there. And they have a great park system, including Piedmont Park. I lived in Midtown and I would walk for hours – as much as I could – in the park. It was pretty amazing.

Is walking your favorite way to stay fit?

I love walking. That kind of took over during the pandemic, and I was lucky enough to be in Santa Monica [California] so I could walk a lot. Since childhood I have been a great loner. I go for walks and think. I don’t listen to anything. I don’t listen to books. I don’t listen to music. I don’t talk on the phone. I like to be present and observe and be occupied with my thoughts.