HOLLYWOOD -- The CBS sitcom "Becker" is about a doctor (played by Ted Danson) who has some extremely strong opinions about, well, just about everything -- from daytime talk shows to gun control to teenage pregnancy. And he has no compunction at all about expressing those opinions. Loudly.
But John Becker is not the only strong character on the show. His chief nurse and office manager, Margaret, doesn't give him an inch. And the woman who plays her, Hattie Winston, couldn't be happier about that."I love Margaret," she said with a big laugh. "Just the way she sort of lays it out there. One of her favorite lines is, 'Just suck it up. Just do it. I don't want to hear this.' So I love it when she gets to tell Becker off."
Not that Winston herself is quite so confrontational.
"I might start to say something, and I'll pull back a little bit," she said. "But one of the things my husband always says about me is, 'If you don't want to know the truth, don't ask her. Because she'll tell you.' "
Chatting with TV critics on the set of the CBS sitcom, Winston is her normal effusive self. She has a quick, infectious laugh and displays the sort of easy familiarity that makes her seem like everyone's friend.
And it quickly becomes obvious that more than a bit of Hattie is invested in Margaret -- or is that the other way around?
When one critic starts leafing through the prop appointment scheduling book, Winston exclaims, "What are you doing? Do you even have an appointment?"
Minutes later, when another critic starts checking out the mail on her desk, she slaps his hand -- completely in character.
Checking out that appointment book reveals that Dr. Becker has some rather prominent patients -- names that Winston has written there herself.
"We've got Jessica Lange. We've got Ingrid Bergman. We've Doris Day, Quincy Jones, Thelma Ritter, Clark Gable," she said. "It depends on my mood that day. And what movie I may have seen. You just kind of play along."
(But she can't quite recall what prompted her decide to pencil in Frankenstein's bride.)
The fact that she's somewhat proprietary over her on-set work station has something to do with the fact that she's personally invested in the space. The set decorator asked Winston what she'd like to have there and complied with all her requests.
"These are my Altoids. This is my little doll here," Winston said. "I had asked for an angel because I like angels. These are pictures of my daughter."
She also wanted to make sure that a collage of baby pictures included "different pictures of all sorts of ethnicities here." And she's more than happy to have a poster of Blair Underwood nearby.
"He sort of inspires me," she said with a laugh. "I can look over that and say, 'Hmmmmmm.' "
Taking such input from the actors is not exactly standard procedure when it comes to television shows.
"That has not been my experience," Winston said. "That's why coming to work is so exciting. I don't feel like I'm just in here doing a job, I feel like this is my space."
And she has made herself right at home.
"When I come in here, I really feel like I'm coming to work," Winston said. "Every week, a lot of my business -- a lot of my acting -- takes place right here. So I invent things for myself to do. It may look to you like I'm just doing files and things like that. But I give myself different tasks, like I've created a situation where I do the billing at the beginning of the month. I have to do insurance follow-ups. I have to make appointments. I have to call the lab.
"I give myself all of these different tasks. So that when I'm here, I'm actually doing medical stuff and running the office. As an actress, I have to create a reality."
The actress has built a rather complete back-story for her character, based on relatively little information from the writers. For instance, one script mentioned that Margaret had to take two trains in order to make it to work every day.
"And I created for myself that I live in Queens. So, for me to get on that D train and then transfer and come all the way up here to the Bronx and work for John Becker -- he must be doing something really great up here."
And Winston also knows exactly why Margaret puts up with Becker.
"We are in the Bronx, and he could be on Park Avenue. But he chooses to be here," she said. "And that kind of elevates him for me. That's why I take two trains every day to be here with him."
Not that any of this has come in the scripts.
"This is Hattie the actress inventing stuff," Winston said. "What I gave myself was, I was also with him when he was doing all his research. He was a big research doctor at Harvard. He liked what I was doing, and he asked me to come with him here. I said, 'Fine, you do the medical stuff and I'll run the office.' Therefore, Margaret doesn't take any crap from him.
"They haven't told me this. This is the back-story I created for myself. It gives me, as an actress, a reason to be here."
One thing she particularly likes about the part is that the casting was color-blind. The part was conceived as a woman -- not as a black woman. And the fact that Margaret is black and John is white has never even come up on "Becker."
"It hasn't. And isn't that refreshing?" Winston said. "It was never an issue."
And she's thrilled that the writers have already fleshed out Margaret's character so that she's more than just a cliche.
"We did a show where Margaret has a little flirtatious thing with the mailman. I liked that," Winston said. "That was so exciting because Margaret is not 29."
Winston has played a wide variety of roles in live theater, television (most notably the late, lamented "Homefront") and film. And she said "Becker" is among her most pleasant professional experiences.
"We have such a wonderful time," she said. "It's a great cast to work with, and the crew is great. I don't want to sound like a cliche, but's it's really getting to be like a family. We're just having fun trying to figure out -- how can we make this funny?"
And the collaborative spirit just adds to that.
"It's why I started acting in the first place," Winston said. "For me, acting is about the process. It's about the discovery. We all like to come to rehearsal, and that's the truth. That's the fun part.
"Today, for example, we were working on a little bit and it wasn't quite working. And I said, 'Oh! If I had this prop!' So they ran out and found me this prop and it did work. Sometimes it doesn't work. But the process of discovery -- that's what acting is about."
And, here on the set, her character is never far away from her. When a critic asks if can make an appointment, she replies in a very-much-Margaret tone of voice:
"Yes, you may. Will you come to our office again? Just call me," she said, bursting out laughing.