Susan Howard

Susan Howard was born Jeri Lynn Mooney in Marshall, Texas. Long before Dallas, she was already doing the unglamorous part of the job — training, learning, and taking the kinds of roles that teach you how to hold a scene without stealing it.

That foundation matters, because Howard’s best work is built on listening. She makes Donna feel present — like she’s thinking, reacting, and choosing her words the way a real person would.

Like many actors of her era, Howard moved through guest roles and recurring parts that sharpen timing and range. It’s the kind of experience that prepares you for long-running television — where you need to deliver truth on take three, even when the schedule is tight and the story turns fast.

Before she ever set foot on Southfork, Howard co-starred on Petrocelli as Maggie Petrocelli. It’s a different kind of show from Dallas — more grounded, more procedural — but it gave her something important: the space to build a character week after week.

That experience shows up later in Dallas. Donna grows and changes, but she remains coherent — you always know what she cares about, even when she’s making a messy choice.

Donna enters Dallas as someone with a point of view — and the courage to keep it. She’s smart, principled, and often the person willing to say the uncomfortable truth in a room full of Ewings.

What makes Howard’s performance land is its warmth. Donna isn’t written as a “perfect” moral judge. She’s written as a person trying to build a life with someone she loves, inside a family system that tends to chew people up.

The relationship between Donna and Ray Krebbs works because it’s not a fairy tale. It’s two people with different instincts trying to build something stable while Dallas keeps throwing curveballs.

Howard makes Donna’s side of that relationship feel grounded: when Donna pushes, it’s usually because she’s trying to protect their future. When she cracks, it’s because she’s tired — not because she suddenly became someone else.

After leaving regular television, Howard shifted her focus toward writing, civic involvement, and political advocacy. She has been associated with conservative causes in Texas and has been active in gun-rights circles, including work connected to the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Whatever a viewer’s politics, it’s part of her public story: she’s one of the Dallas cast members whose post-show life became closely linked with activism, and she pursued that path with the same directness she brought to Donna.

In our interview, Susan Howard speaks candidly about her years on Dallas, the pace of production, and what it was like to play a character who often acted as the grown-up in the room.

She also recalled a moment that still stings: learning she was leaving the show not from an official conversation, but because her hair person mentioned it first — a reminder that, in long-running television, news sometimes travels in the most informal (and unfair) ways.