the success of Housewives, and is grateful to him both for the job and the complex woman that is Katherine. “She’s a little good, a little evil,” she smiles. “It’s kind of a nice mix.”

Hot spot
The role is Delany’s highest-profile part since her breakout role as nurse Colleen McMurphy in China Beach 20 years ago, although she has worked steadily in film and television, and has been the voice of Lois Lane in Superman/Justice League/Batman TV cartoons for more than a decade.

She has a few independent films awaiting release, including Route 30, in which she plays “an Amish woman who smokes and drinks” and the 1970s-era Multiple Sarcasms opposite Tim Hutton, who played her husband in the short-lived series Kidnapped. “I got the job because of him,” she says of the movie. “We love working with each other.”

While she moved back to her native New York while filming Kidnapped (she was born there and grew up in Connecticut in a well-to-do family), she has since returned to Los Angeles, where she drives her eco-friendly Prius to work. “I rarely work more than three days a week. It’s actually a dream job,” says Delany, who has ample time to pursue other interests and pastimes.

Time off
“I’m a big yoga person,” she says. “I’ve been doing it for 20 years, so long that I could teach a class,” she laughs, crediting the Eastern practice with helping her to relax, along with a glass of red