Carrie Heffernan

Carrie Heffernan (born Simone Spooner) is a fictional character on the American sitcom The King of Queens, played by Leah Remini.

Carrie Heffernan is the attractive, sharp-tongued wife to Doug Heffernan (Kevin James). Her father Arthur Spooner (Jerry Stiller) lives in their basement. Although her wacky father and husband are a handful and behave like children, she shows much love towards them, great patience with them, and is always the level-headed one and the voice of reason in the house. For these reasons, Carrie is in charge, but sometimes she becomes particularly domineering and disapproving. For instance, Carrie has been known to order Doug not to go to certain restaurants, kick out all of his friends when visiting, tell him what kinds of foods to eat, forbid him from wearing the kinds of cologne she doesn't like, and also give her father curfews. Because of things like this, Doug often disobeys Carrie a lot behind her back and is very dishonest with her. Eventually Carrie finds out and the two will end up in a big argument.

In Season Eight, it was revealed that her "real" name was Simone. When she was a child, Arthur lost her name in a poker game and had to switch names with her cousin Carrie. Carrie's mother, Sophia, insisted on having "mother to Simone" engraved on her tombstone. Carrie originally had a sister (or probably, and more specifically, a paternal half-sister named Sara (Lisa Rieffel) who moved in along with Arthur, but after the first season, the character was dropped. It is worth noting that Sophia Spooner's grave makes no mention of another daughter.

Carrie's best friend is Kelly Palmer (Merrin Dungey), soft-spoken wife of Doug's best friend Deacon Palmer (Victor Williams). Doug and Carrie hired a dog-walker, Holly Shumpert (Nicole Sullivan) to walk her father (Arthur) so he doesn't get so annoying. Carrie and Holly's relationship is strained, with Holly admitting to finding Carrie 'scary'. The two have tried to bond on several occasions, but are not close friends. In one episode, Carrie went as far as threatening a concession stand workers life, telling him if she didn't get a hot dog on a stick she would "Put him on a stick."

She worked as a legal secretary for a lawyer named Doug Pruzan (Alex Skuby), and made slightly over half of the Heffernans' income. In Season Six, she lost her job and briefly worked as a dog walker, but didn't last long. By the end of Season Six, Carrie was working for a real estate development firm.