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MARCIA CROSS

Was your wedding everything ever imagined?
It was so ridiculously beyond what I could ever have. I never grew up imagining my wedding. I wanted to be an actress. That’s all I cared about. The wedding was so beautiful and meaningful. Not just for me, but for all of Tom’s family who had a reunion and then for my girl friends, including my childhood ones, who all got together. It had a lot to do with bonding. At the end of the night, there were gardenias going all the way up to our suite and petals going out to the balcony. It was crazy! I just kept saying to him, “I feel so guilty! Like my Catholic guilt is just spilling (laughter)!” It was insane! I felt so spoiled.

Just in case you get pregnant, would that be okay in the third season?
Life comes first. Marc Cherry is a genius so I think it would all work out. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Did anyone from the show give you any advice before the wedding?
We had a jar on the set that you put your advice in. Felicity (Huffman) wrote, “Marry Bill (Felicity’s actor-husband) Macy (laughter)."

The show and the cast were shut out of the nominations in the Emmy Awards this year. What was your reaction?
Gosh. I was surprised. But to be truthful, I thought, “Well, maybe this is a great thing.” Because it was clean across the boards. Everybody was starting together to have a great year. It wasn’t like it was just one person (who was shut out). The message probably was, “Okay, let’s go back to work. Let’s love our jobs and do what we do and get on with it.” I was on my honeymoon so I wasn’t particularly devastated. Maybe at a different time of my life I would’ve been. It just wasn’t where all my hopes and dreams were. I also think that you always just have to do your work and that one day you’re hot, the next day you’re cold. That’s just life.

Who are you closest to in the cast?
I’m pretty close to Eva (Longoria) and Felicity.

Before Tom came, have you given up on the thought of marriage?
Yes, I had. I was completely hopeless. I had looked into adoption. I felt like I had made my peace with it. I was very sad about it. But I really never, ever thought I would meet anybody.

Are you going to adopt?
I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’ll do something. Soon, I hope.

Marc told us that he wants to take all of your characters to dark places.

I lived on the dark side for a long time, actually. This is really the first time in my life for a while that I’ve been very happy. So the dark places are not new to me. I’ve always played dark and complicated characters. I’ve never been the happy ingénue.

Marc said he based your character on his mother, Martha. What is she like?
She is very powerful. She has a very dry sense of humor. I remember introducing my fiancé to her. She gave him a “thumbs up.” I was like, “Whew, he must be okay.” Because she’s definitely tough. She instilled Mark with this incredible confidence. But the key for me about what he tells me about her is that she thinks there’s no reason ever to be unpleasant. That informs me a lot about my character. Whenever I start to get a little crabby, I’d be like, “No, no, no, you can feel that, but you mustn’t show that.” So there’s always that dichotomy of always having a pleasant exterior.

What can we expect from Bree this season?
You’re going to see a Bree who is feeling like 20 again, hopeful, reborn and feminine and wanting to have that dream again. She got back her femininity and her softness is coming out. With Rex (her character’s husband), they were at a deep, tough place in their marriage. Now, she has met this new man and it’s like fresh hope. He’s tall, dark, handsome and he likes to clean (laughter). You’ll see.

Oprah Winfrey recently had to clarify (in O, The Oprah Magazine) that she is not a lesbian. You were in a similar situation last year.
Right.

Does it surprise you when even Oprah was questioned?
Well, those rumors about Oprah and Gayle (King, her best friend and O magazine editor) had been going on for a while. We have a bizarre society that way (about all the attention on one’s sexuality).

What was it like when you were asked on Barbara Walters’ “The View” about rumors that you are a lesbian?
Honestly? I was not happy about it. I handled it very well at that time. My parents were in town. My father, who’s 80-something, and my mother were in the front row of the audience (in the TV studio). When I got backstage, Barbara Walters came up to me and said, “You know, I have to ask you about this.” And I said, “Why do you have to ask me about this?” “Well, it’s news.” I was like, “It’s news?” At which point my publicist came in and we sorted out how to deal with it. And then, thank God—and I don’t think this is always the case—my mouth and my thoughts really came together and I felt like I spoke well at the time.

But I have to tell you that I am not a huge Barbara Walters fan (laughter). That ended that for me. My dad was in the front row going like this (gestures), “What did they say? Are you a what?” I just thought about Barbara, “You didn’t have to ask me that question. That was ‘tabloid-y’ of you.” I felt like really used. So now I don’t really like looking at Barbara Walters.

It kind of regurgitates the rumor and spreads it even further. So it doesn’t matter what you say…
It’s salacious.

And people will continue talking about it.
I personally don’t care if people think I’m gay. It was just that you really felt part of this gossip ratings mill and not regarded as a human at all. My parents were like, “What was that about?”

How did you deal with Tom?
I got on the phone, and I’m like, “Hi, Honey. How are you?” I really didn’t want to say anything. And then I go, “Well, I’ll talk to you later.” Because he’s in the financial world and his phone was ringing off the hook. And he went, “I saw it.” His boss called him in and said, “I think you should know blah blah blah.” He said to his boss, “I know everything I need to know about her.” Which was really great (laughter). Then we talked about it and he was fantastic, obviously. I was really proud of myself because I didn’t say (to Barbara), “As a matter of fact, you’re wrong. I have a boyfriend.” I was not going to use my private life. I was really happy about that.

MARC CHERRY

How many scripts do you actually write?
Every script is group written. I took all of the Bree story lines this past season. Bree is based on my mother so I like to write for that character. I have a personally affinity for her. But we all kind of get together and write the scripts. It’s such a complicated show that no writer could churn out quickly one episode by himself. We do all the rewrites together. I usually have a hand in every single page that you see on screen. If it’s not writing it myself, it’s giving notes on the page or suggesting a joke here or there, doing something like that. So it’s hard to say. I’ve written parts of every single episode. But certainly not all of them by any stretch of the imagination.

What do you think draws the international audiences to this show?
Women all over the world understand desperation, what it means to be driven crazy by your children, your husband or your personal life. It’s that “relatability” that is the lynchpin of “Desperate Housewives.”

How close is Bree to your mother’s real life?
Well, first of all, I want to make it clear that I never slept with my mother’s boyfriend. I think that’s important to state right at the start. The essence of Bree is very much my mother. Bree is a woman who likes everything to be pleasant, who has an idea of herself as a lady, and comports herself in a certain way. And that’s my mom. My mother comes from a small town in Oklahoma and tries for some semblance of gracious living.

One of the things I decided early on was that the more obstacles I could throw at Bree, the funnier it would get, the more dramatic it would get, and you would start to understand Bree’s frustration. That took Bree from being perceived at first by many as a kind of a cold, Martha Stewart controlling type into a woman whom viewers really root for. I think she’s one of the most popular characters on the show. It’s because people feel for her trying to maintain this air and then they see the obstacles I throw at her.

Did Teri Hatcher let you know that she was going to make a revelation of what happened in her childhood (she bared that she was sexually abused by an uncle)?
Teri said to us that she was going to make a very big statement about her personal life. And that it was going to be released the next day. So when it came out, a couple of people actually figured already what they thought it might be just from the oblique reference. She made sure we all knew it was coming. I think that was her way of saying, this is going to be coming and I prefer not to talk about it. But I did want you all to know that this was going to be in the press. We all afforded her a great deal of privacy on the issue.

What kind of surprises are we going to expect in Season Three?
Hopefully, there will be a lot of them, if I’ve done my job right. We’ve got a couple of new characters that I’m bringing in to shake things up. We’ve got a new love interest for Teri Hatcher played by actor Dougray Scott, a lovely Scotsman, who will be playing an Englishman. I’m a sucker for a man with an accent so why shouldn’t Susan (Teri’s character) be? Then we’ve got a young, brilliant new actor, Josh Henderson, who’s going to be playing Edie Britt’s (Nicollette Sheridan) troublemaking nephew who will be coming to Wisteria Lane.

I hope to have some infusion of excitement from these actors. Plus we’ve got a couple of old favorites returning in our third episode of Season Three, including Jesse Metcalfe. We will see a certain amount of growth in that character.

How has success affected you?
I’ve become a raging Hollywood asshole. The first thing I say to people is that I don’t fear dying broke anymore. That’s a nice change. I think the biggest change in my life is that I got asked to judge the recent Miss Universe pageant. That was a lot of fun. It’s weird because I go to places and I meet other famous people—many times they know who I am. That’s really weird. I kind of toddled along through my life with a level of anonymity and suddenly, I woke up one day and for example, I walked into a Broadway theater and I got my tickets from a guy who says, oh, I love your show. He hadn’t seen my name or anything. I was like, “Oh, ok, thank you.”

It’s that feeling of “I’m somebody,” that’s all. I always had a decent self-esteem but to have folks recognize you, that’s an odd experience. To see how people react because you’re somewhat known, that’s just fascinating. But mostly, my life is as it always was. I get up, I go to work, I come home, I’m tired, I watch a little news, I pet my cat and then I go to bed.

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