The big thing to remember is that the show is constantly rotating staff and stories, so the fact that she has been around this long in the show is amazing.
Her grandfather was author finis l.
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Her original name is Kathleen Doyle Bates.
She is the youngest of three girls born to Bertye Kathleen Talbot , a homemaker, and Langdon Doyle Bates, a mechanical engineer.
Her great-grandfather, a New Orleans Irish migrant from Louisiana, served as the doctor of President Andrew Jackson.