They burn down houses, sleep with the hired help, mow the lawn in the middle of the night, and make sure their guns are finely polished before they raise them to their temples. These aren’t the mothers and spouses you remember from your childhood in the suburbs. They are the Desperate Housewives, a sexy, conniving, ruthless crew who will be taking over their idyllic little cul-de-sac (and ABC) when the critically-acclaimed show premieres this Sunday at 9/8 Central.
In an exclusive sit-down with FilmStew, stars Teri Hatcher, Felicity Huffman, Eva Longoria, Ricardo Chavira and Nicolette Sheridan discussed their excitement over getting a truly original show on network television, their love of the writing, and their desire to make these despicable characters the focus of water cooler discussion for seasons to come.
“There’s never been anything like it on television,” insists Longoria, a young actress who’s happy to embrace her Latino spiciness for the role of adulteress Gabrielle Solis. “People say that all the time about this show. There’s never been anything that captures this aspect of life, this suburbia.”
“It’s such a mixture of Stepford Wives, Sex and the City and American Beauty and Six Feet Under – it encompasses a lot,” she adds. “It takes the best things of a lot of shows and puts them in one. It’s a dark comedy that has mystery and it has all the ingredients to make interesting television.”
TV veteran Hatcher, who recently revealed that she’s been taking stripper classes to buff up her body for the show, concurs. “That’s what makes it rare and special. There are some other good programs coming on television, and I don’t want to beat them up, but it’s rare to find a good piece of material on television and this is one of them this year.”
In the scintillating first episode, Hatcher’s Susan Mayer begins to grow a conscience after one of her best friends commits suicide in the show’s opening moments. Looking around her, she begins to see her friends – the Martha Stewart-esque Bree (Marcia Cross), the discontented Lynette (Huffman), and the seemingly careless Gabrielle - in a different light. Wanting to change things for herself and her teenage daughter, she sets her sights on a single guy who just moved on to the street as her first step back into the dating world.
“Her husband left her several years ago, so she’s a single Mom with a twelve-year-old girl who hasn’t really recovered from the failure of her marriage and the rejection and the shattering of her fantasy,” says Hatcher. “My character is having a life I didn’t anticipate having and I’m trying to move beyond that and become trusting enough to let somebody in.”
The problem is, someone else wants to let him in as well, and that someone is a delightfully easy blonde named Edie Britt. Sheridan, who plays Britt with a fierce sexiness that will make you love to hate her, says that she’s delighted with being the most desperate of all the girls.
“I love her naughtiness,” remarks the actress. “It’s always fun to play the little terror of the show. When people see Edie coming, they panic. Desperate Housewives is a very dark comedy, and there are a lot of truths – it’s touching and it’s weird and it’s funny and it’s witty.”
“Edie is just this libidinous, funny, out there, great character that’s so much fun to play.”
The beautiful Sheridan may get all the attention on the show’s posters and commercials, but those who’ve seen Desperate Housewives are already buzzing over the performance of Huffman, whose sassy matriarch seems to be a character Emmy voters could grow to love. The actress and real-life housewife of actor William H. Macy says that she loves playing someone who doesn’t take any guff.
“She’s a mother of four,” Huffman explains. “She had a high-power corporate job and got pregnant with twins and decided to become a stay at home Mom. I think her desperateness comes from raising four kids under the age of six and trying to find your identity in motherhood when all you’ve known of it is through being a businesswoman.”
Huffman, who has made a career out of working with such legendary wordsmiths as David Mamet and Aaron Sorkin, says that the strength of the show is its innovative scripts. “Why is any show ever good?” she asks. “Because of the writing; if it’s on the page, it’s on the stage.”
“Mark Cherry wrote a brilliant script,” raves Huffman. “It’s a new tone, it’s drama, it’s comedy it’s heightened reality, it’s funny, it’s sexy, it’s wicked, it’s all of these things. That’s why it’s great.”
Chavira, who plays Longoria’s clueless husband on the show, is impressed with the HBO-like commitment ABC has shown to the atypical Sunday night fare. “It’s a big risk that I think ABC is taking, but a good risk,” she says. “They’re putting a foot in the right direction by trying to do shows that are a little riskier. The topics are riskier, and so are the themes, and I think that’s something all the networks will go through at some point.”
“It’s always tricky to do the dance of censorship,” agrees Longoria, “particularly after the Nipple Gate fiasco with Janet Jackson. You can’t even say, ‘Screw you’ anymore – everything is scrutinized. I’d rather have sex on TV than violence, and our show is sexy.”
Sexy, mean-spirited and desperate. In a world in which Britney Spears can use that combination to sell fourteen million copies of an album, these housewives ought to do just fine.
[Twice a month, Larry Carroll’s TV opinion column “Where’s The Remote?” takes a look at the latest television trends and some of the personalities responsible for them. To reach the author, please email larrycarroll@filmstew.com.]
For this and other interviews, reviews and entertainment coverage, visit FilmStew.com (http://www.filmstew.com)
