Speaker 1: Welcome to desperately devoted Think of us as your favorite
Speaker 1: neighbors as we chat about life and relationships, all.
Speaker 2: While we revisit the iconic show Desperate Housewives together.
Speaker 1: I'm Terry Hatcher, I'm Andrea Bowen, and I'm Emerson Tenny.
Speaker 1: You know how when you connect with an old friend
Speaker 1: that you haven't seen in a long time, and you
Speaker 1: have that feeling of where you just pick up right
Speaker 1: where you left off and the best, it's the best feeling.
Speaker 1: So today I have that feeling because and you super
Speaker 1: Desperate Housewives fans, you are going to be so excited
Speaker 1: for this. We have a guest here, a very special guest,
Speaker 1: somebody who you might not immediately recognize their name, but
Speaker 1: you will recognize the influence that this person had on
Speaker 1: the show because it was everywhere from the cast to
Speaker 1: the music, from the way it looked on screen, I mean,
Speaker 1: from dealing with the network stuff that went on behind
Speaker 1: the scenes that nobody's ever heard of. This person was
Speaker 1: one of two people that helped it get there and
Speaker 1: keep it there, and he was one of the two
Speaker 1: executive producers that had everything to do with getting this
Speaker 1: show made. Of course, everyone's familiar with Mark Cherry, right,
Speaker 1: So it's about time that you get to meet the
Speaker 1: man behind so much else that happened on this show.
Speaker 1: He has been my friend from the beginning, and I've
Speaker 1: missed him desperately. He went off after the first season
Speaker 1: to be the president of NBC Universal International Studios, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, produced a little show called Downton Abbey,
Speaker 1: among other great shows. So we are so very desperately
Speaker 1: devoted to him for being here with us today bringing
Speaker 1: his unique and encompassing perspective. Everyone please go crazy and welcome.
Speaker 1: Executive producer Michael Etelstein.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so great to see all of you. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's been twenty years. Basically until a couple weeks ago,
Speaker 3: I hadn't seen Emerson since what you were seven? Yeah,
Speaker 3: you were thirteen. Andrea, Yeah, and you look amazing. And
Speaker 3: then Terry it's it's I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: It's it's been so great to reconnect. It just it
Speaker 1: really and we're going to get into all the stuff
Speaker 1: that's come up for us. But I'm it's crazy kind
Speaker 1: of the timing of us reconnecting and us doing this podcast,
Speaker 1: and it makes so much sense for you to be
Speaker 1: here because by the way, Andrew and I don't remember anything.
Speaker 1: And not only that, Like, I think people have these
Speaker 1: assumptions that we know more than we know, just because
Speaker 1: we were on the show and we really were such
Speaker 1: a little part of it and really only in front
Speaker 1: of the camera, Like I wasn't even ever in a
Speaker 1: writer's room, do you know what I mean? Like, I
Speaker 1: think there's assumptions that I know much more than I know.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad you're here to help reveal stuff that
Speaker 1: I know our fans are going to want to know about.
Speaker 4: It's like, the first season was centered around a mystery
Speaker 4: on the story of the story on the street. But
Speaker 4: this is kind of like our first season one mystery.
Speaker 4: We can't wait here everything you have to show.
Speaker 1: To surprise us. So let's just can we just start
Speaker 1: at the beginning, which is, how the hell did you
Speaker 1: get involved with this thing?
Speaker 3: So at the time, I was producing a show for Touchstone,
Speaker 3: which is Disney's television armor. It was then and my show,
Speaker 3: which was called Threat Matrix, was coming to an end.
Speaker 3: It didn't get picked up for another season, and the
Speaker 3: studio Josh Berry, who was amazing, sent me the script.
Speaker 3: I was so busy producing another show. I didn't read
Speaker 3: it for six weeks. Oh wow, and it sat on
Speaker 3: my desk and Josh finally is like, dude, are you're
Speaker 3: going to read the script? And so I read it
Speaker 3: then and I immediately thought, this is the most amazing
Speaker 3: pilot script i'd read.
Speaker 1: That's my recollection of I'm a little vague on where
Speaker 1: I was. I somehow picture that I was poolside. I
Speaker 1: think it was in Tucson. I was at a hotel.
Speaker 1: I don't know why that comes to my mind, but
Speaker 1: I do remember saying to my manager at the time,
Speaker 1: this is like the best script I've ever read. I'd
Speaker 1: do anything to be any of these women in this show.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because that script was so popular and
Speaker 3: as you know, in Hollywood explain to your listeners. So
Speaker 3: in Hollywood, you know, most times with big actresses like yourself,
Speaker 3: it was offer only. And what that means is the
Speaker 3: actor won't come in and read, and the only thing
Speaker 3: you can do is make them an offer, and you
Speaker 3: have to hope that you cast the show properly. We
Speaker 3: had decided Mark myself and the director had decided that
Speaker 3: everybody had to come in and read, which was highly unusual.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you something. I actually love reading, I
Speaker 1: love auditioning. I've never been one of the actresses that
Speaker 1: had even for the smallest parts. And my reasoning is
Speaker 1: because I don't want to show up this on the
Speaker 1: set and have the director whose vision I'm trying to
Speaker 1: execute go, that's not how I see it like that's
Speaker 1: I didn't see it like that, right. I want to
Speaker 1: have the exchange of bringing my creativity and my talent
Speaker 1: to a producer and a director's so that we can
Speaker 1: be like, oh, yeah, she's going to be able to
Speaker 1: deliver what it is that you want.
Speaker 3: Well, and you were absolutely fearless because I think we
Speaker 3: made you auditions seven times.
Speaker 2: Wait yeahs wait why so many times?
Speaker 3: You know? It was interesting some of the some of
Speaker 3: the decisions were instantaneous some of them. So you know,
Speaker 3: we saw Eva and I know you guys have talked
Speaker 3: about this. Eva was cast first. She came in. She
Speaker 3: was supposed to be a supermodel. She's obviously not tall,
Speaker 3: and we just decided, okay, aside from that, she's it.
Speaker 3: And she really, you know, wasn't famous at that point. Marca.
Speaker 1: She gives tall though.
Speaker 3: Great energy, and we shot her. If you look at
Speaker 3: the runway sequence. We shot her from below to make
Speaker 3: her look taller, but again, it really doesn't matter. Once
Speaker 3: once the audience connects with a character, they do they
Speaker 3: don't really care. So Eva was cast first. Marcia came
Speaker 3: in for Mary Alice because Marcia was studying psychology if
Speaker 3: I remember, and really wasn't interested in being a full
Speaker 3: time actress again. And we convinced her as a group
Speaker 3: to you know, audition for for Bree and thank god
Speaker 3: we did it. It's unbelievab. Yes, we'll come back to
Speaker 3: the finale because there's a great moment for her, and
Speaker 3: then you know, let's see. We we cast Felicity. Felicity
Speaker 3: was the network actually said to us they didn't need
Speaker 3: to audition her. She was so hot coming off of
Speaker 3: an Aaron An Aaron Sorkin show. ABC was desperate for her,
Speaker 3: and we basically said, right, we're not going to cast
Speaker 3: anybody who doesn't read. So Felicity came into our little
Speaker 3: office in Burbank and she came in covered in like
Speaker 3: baby food, and literally I don't think she actually dressed
Speaker 3: for the part. I think she just came in as
Speaker 3: being a mom or a young mom walked in did
Speaker 3: the scene was like, oh my god, yes that's Lynette,
Speaker 3: and I literally ran out of the room, called the
Speaker 3: network and we started making her deal.
Speaker 5: Wow that quickly, Yes it was and.
Speaker 3: We we didn't have to take her to network. And
Speaker 3: then you know, there was there was one other person
Speaker 3: we were considering for you know, the role and for Susan. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My memory of my last audition, which I feel like,
Speaker 1: is accurate. And I don't know if I went up
Speaker 1: the elevator at ABC with the other person that was
Speaker 1: trying to do my role, or if like we we
Speaker 1: traded off, like she went up as I came down
Speaker 1: or whatever. But I do remember my my last audition
Speaker 1: being so good that when I left, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: at least I didn't screw that up. Like if they
Speaker 1: don't cast me, then they don't cast me. But it's
Speaker 1: not because you like I forgot my lines or I
Speaker 1: didn't do a good job, or I was having a
Speaker 1: bad day, or like I recall it being a kind
Speaker 1: of a knocked it out of the park audition and
Speaker 1: just the kind where you can be like if I
Speaker 1: don't get it, I don't get it.
Speaker 2: I remember you telling me that story, and I think
Speaker 2: about that. Sometimes when I pitch a movie, like the
Speaker 2: two times I've been hired, the two movies that I've
Speaker 2: really been hired, I guess it's been hired to write.
Speaker 2: I have had that feeling where I've left the pitch
Speaker 2: and I've thought of that moment because you've told me
Speaker 2: about it, and I've been like, well, I kind of
Speaker 2: already know that this like exists in the world in
Speaker 2: front of me, and now the pieces are coming into place,
Speaker 2: and if I don't get it has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with anything that I did.
Speaker 5: Are we named that way? Are we naming the other actors?
Speaker 3: I will say this in fairness to her. She was brilliant.
Speaker 3: She was not American, and when she did when she
Speaker 3: did comedy with an American accent, she lost that twinkle.
Speaker 3: And she was really good and really surprising because you
Speaker 3: wouldn't have thought of her for that role. But at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, so I don't even remember
Speaker 3: us bringing somebody else to ABC, and I remember you
Speaker 3: know you you had canceled. We actually had an ABC
Speaker 3: audition set up for you and you canceled it, which
Speaker 3: was unheard of, Like actors never canceled network read throughs
Speaker 3: or auditions and you weren't whatever. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you weren't feeling well or whatever, but we wanted you
Speaker 3: enough that we rescheduled, I think for the next day
Speaker 3: or the day after, and you came in and the
Speaker 3: rest was history.
Speaker 1: Oh so grateful and.
Speaker 3: Well, listen, I mean we are. I've been rewatching episodes
Speaker 3: which I haven't looked at in twenty years. And the nuance,
Speaker 3: the subtlety, the vulnerability, the ability to be just hilariously
Speaker 3: hilariously funny. And I know you guys have talked about
Speaker 3: what it's like the naked scene, which was still one
Speaker 3: of the greatest moments I think in TV to pull
Speaker 3: that off in the complexity of it and also be
Speaker 3: completely charming and vulnerable and sweet and.
Speaker 1: So tell us about you were saying like that. There
Speaker 1: was a lot to the timing of it that I
Speaker 1: think I've totally forgotten that we You had the script
Speaker 1: in January, so.
Speaker 3: I got the script. So here's what happened. So, so
Speaker 3: you know, Mark Cherry had been a sitcom producer and
Speaker 3: had never produced a scripted drama, which is a very
Speaker 3: different way of filming. So you know, when you shoot
Speaker 3: a sitcom, it's multi camera, you shoot everything is sort
Speaker 3: of on a proscenium and you're done. As you guys know,
Speaker 3: scripted television, there's a whole other thing. You shoot in
Speaker 3: one direction, you turn around, you shoot the other way,
Speaker 3: Because you have to deal with all the lighting, etc.
Speaker 3: And it's technically just very, very challenging to make a drama.
Speaker 3: So the studio felt like Mark needed a partner, and
Speaker 3: the person who was supposed to be his partner got
Speaker 3: a job executive producing General Hospital because Chuck Pratt was
Speaker 3: a longtime soap opera guy, and because Chuck wasn't available,
Speaker 3: it created an opening. Mark met a few producers and
Speaker 3: I think to this day that I was probably the
Speaker 3: least offensive or the one And to be candid with you,
Speaker 3: the studio was very concerned about Mark being a gay
Speaker 3: man and me being a gay man, and I had
Speaker 3: to go have a meeting and kind of pitch my
Speaker 3: take on the show because they were honestly afraid at
Speaker 3: the time the show would become campy.
Speaker 6: Oh that's so interesting, yeah.
Speaker 3: And so it was like that was the elephant in
Speaker 3: the room that I addressed in my meeting, And to me,
Speaker 3: when I read the script, I had two images in
Speaker 3: my head it was American Beauty meets Edward Scissorhand.
Speaker 6: Love the references.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And so when you see the show, because American Beauty
Speaker 3: kind of showed us what was lurking behind our neighbors doors,
Speaker 3: and it won the Oscar and it was such a presence.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's hard to remember because it's you know,
Speaker 3: we're going back, you know, twenty plus years. I remember that,
Speaker 3: and yeah, it was brilliant. And then the idea of
Speaker 3: this suburban world that Tim Burton created with Edward Scissorhand,
Speaker 3: where it was you know, we're going to take you
Speaker 3: to some very dark places, but if we keep it
Speaker 3: really bright, we can take the audience there. So that's
Speaker 3: what I pitched.
Speaker 2: Wo wait, I have a question. Is that why Danny
Speaker 2: Elfman did the music?
Speaker 3: I mean Danny Elfman we got very lucky because at
Speaker 3: that point in time, he'd only done The Simpsons for TV.
Speaker 3: So Danny did only the main title. He didn't do
Speaker 3: any of the episod Yes, so he did our main title,
Speaker 3: which was you know, iconic and absolutely amazing.
Speaker 2: I just associate him so much with Timberton, and because
Speaker 2: he's scored so many of his films that that's so
Speaker 2: interesting that that's a reference.
Speaker 3: And he got it and it's his first take on
Speaker 3: the theme song was a little less resolved and a
Speaker 3: little darker. And we sat with him and talked with him,
Speaker 3: and he's such a genius. I had to go. I
Speaker 3: was sent with the network notes to go, you know,
Speaker 3: give notes.
Speaker 1: To explain to a musician that you want it subtenly changed.
Speaker 3: It's so interesting because the way he built it was
Speaker 3: it kind of built without a resolve a musical and
Speaker 3: what he did. So I had to go give Danny Elfman,
Speaker 3: like one of the greatest composers of all time, musical
Speaker 3: notes and like you go over and I went to
Speaker 3: his house and in the basement and to Danny's credit, goes, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you just want to resolve, and he just looked at me,
Speaker 3: not up and down. I watched him change one hundred
Speaker 3: lines of music, Like he literally sat there, changed one
Speaker 3: hundred lines of music, you know, instrument parts right, and
Speaker 3: then push play and I'm like, yeah, that's good. Wow.
Speaker 3: He just did it right in front of my eyes
Speaker 3: in like the space of a half hour. And then
Speaker 3: it came back to bite me a little bit because
Speaker 3: when we went to go score the sound. You know
Speaker 3: that that opening. We did it on the Warner Brothers
Speaker 3: a lot on their big orchestral stage, and Danny wanted
Speaker 3: twenty more musicians or something like. His agent called me
Speaker 3: because Danny needs more musicians and Disney which week we
Speaker 3: can get into, you know, before the show had gone
Speaker 3: on the air, Disney was very very conscious about spending.
Speaker 1: Money, right, Okay, So, which is why.
Speaker 3: You were in Flip.
Speaker 5: Flops history solved? Can we also touch on how Charles
Speaker 5: McDougall got involved.
Speaker 3: Sure, that's a good story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, great, let's talk about Charles McDougal so much
Speaker 4: you can see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in January I'm hired, Okay, and then you
Speaker 3: know or maybe it's yeah, I guess beginning of January
Speaker 3: or late so it had to be late December. I
Speaker 3: think I was hired because we started filming like the
Speaker 3: third week in January. Yeah, we delivered in March. No, No,
Speaker 3: we started prep in January and then we started filming
Speaker 3: in March.
Speaker 1: Okay, that sounds right.
Speaker 3: So yes, So I was probably hired in January, and
Speaker 3: the first job I had was to go with Mark
Speaker 3: to a director's home and talk about the script, and
Speaker 3: this was a big feature film director who was who
Speaker 3: had a huge, huge romantic comedy movie that everybody knows.
Speaker 3: And we go and have a meeting and then my
Speaker 3: phone rings about five or six hours after he says, right,
Speaker 3: you seem like a lovely guy, but I can't work
Speaker 3: with him. Oh okay, and so we quit. Wow, And
Speaker 3: we were in that frantic And what people don't realize,
Speaker 3: and what's changed so much about TV now is that
Speaker 3: you know, pilot season. Every studio was producing pilots, every
Speaker 3: network was producing pilots. So you are chasing talent like crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your case was always it was always built around this.
Speaker 3: You would January to March.
Speaker 1: In January to March, you would find out if you
Speaker 1: got picked up in May. Then you would start shooting
Speaker 1: your year series like August, September earlier. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you would do that through April. You would have a
Speaker 1: little break and then you would do it again.
Speaker 6: So you're chasing your cast.
Speaker 1: It's all getting shot at the same time.
Speaker 3: The hunger games of hiring people.
Speaker 1: Now, of course it isn't like that because everyone is
Speaker 1: desperate for a job. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, anyway, started
Speaker 1: to cut your no.
Speaker 3: You're not, and so it's it's so what happened was
Speaker 3: there was a vacuum and the network wanted a big
Speaker 3: film person and I'm like, you know, we make TV.
Speaker 3: We need someone who understands TV. And then we had
Speaker 3: to go a little bit deeper because going back to
Speaker 3: two thousand and four, no one had mixed drama and
Speaker 3: comedy on American television. And I know we won, you know,
Speaker 3: awards and comedy categories, but you know, the show was
Speaker 3: really not a comedy and it wasn't a drama. It
Speaker 3: was entirely its own thing. And so I started to
Speaker 3: think about who knows how to mix comedy and drama,
Speaker 3: and the Brits and watching British television had been doing
Speaker 3: it for years absolutely, and Charles had directed a British
Speaker 3: program called Queer as Folk, which was a really complicated mix.
Speaker 3: It was a realistic look on sort of gay life,
Speaker 3: but it was funny, it was real. He'd also done
Speaker 3: Sex in the City, and so the fact that he'd
Speaker 3: done sex in the City made me and I checked
Speaker 3: with my friends who were producers there, and they said
Speaker 3: they were very happy with the film. They had everything
Speaker 3: they needed. The challenge with Charles was at Disney. He'd
Speaker 3: done some directing for them and had gone wildly over budget,
Speaker 3: and the studio didn't want to hire it, okay, and
Speaker 3: so and everybody wanted to feature film person and somehow,
Speaker 3: some way, I kind of just kept twisting arms until
Speaker 3: they agreed to hire Trump.
Speaker 1: You know when Desperate Housewives was at its best is
Speaker 1: when it was writing this tone of I love your
Speaker 1: examples of American beauty meets Edward Scissorhands is sort of surreal,
Speaker 1: comedic but also grounded and emotional. And when I think
Speaker 1: it wasn't great is when it dipped off into sort
Speaker 1: of more slapsticky, less consistent, you know, with the characters.
Speaker 4: Like too much of one or the other, because that
Speaker 4: balance that that's where it's magic, really lie.
Speaker 1: And Charles was just all over that. I think he's
Speaker 1: so tremendously talented.
Speaker 3: It was so brilliant. He came to set every day
Speaker 3: with a shot list. He handed it out to us,
Speaker 3: he handed out to the camera team, and he was
Speaker 3: wildly prepared. I mean, at one point I saw him
Speaker 3: skulking through the bushes looking at angles and things like
Speaker 3: in his suits. Because you guys talked about he always
Speaker 3: wore suit. English directors wore suits. I mean the thing
Speaker 3: I love about English directors. And I went over to
Speaker 3: London and you know, and built NBC's business there. English
Speaker 3: directors are trained both in camera and in acting. And
Speaker 3: a lot of times in the US TV directors either
Speaker 3: come out of the the the talent acting part and
Speaker 3: then become a director, or they come out of the
Speaker 3: camera world and become a director. But the English directors
Speaker 3: really have both raft and in fact, when we did
Speaker 3: the thing with Oprah where she came on our show, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, Charles, I brought Charles back because we had
Speaker 3: to cut Oprah into all these scenes from the first
Speaker 3: season and it was so technically challenging that we needed
Speaker 3: a director who could actually understand the technical challenge and
Speaker 3: do all that. And so remember we we had we
Speaker 3: worked Oprah an eighteen hour day.
Speaker 6: Oh my, I'm so excited to see this.
Speaker 3: So it's on. You could google it to Oprah Winfrey
Speaker 3: with Stereia Lane, folks. So we made it. We made
Speaker 3: an eight minute movie where Oprah came on. It was
Speaker 3: for the Oprah Winfrey Show. And I took the guys
Speaker 3: and that's where the guys went on Oprah with that movie.
Speaker 5: Oh Okay, and then we didn't get to have Charles back.
Speaker 3: Charles, I think was a brilliant pilot director, and I
Speaker 3: don't think Charles had any desire to to kind of
Speaker 3: be an episodic director.
Speaker 1: It's a different beast like the directors of pilots, and
Speaker 1: this is not unusual. They'll put their stamp all over it,
Speaker 1: and because they have that bit of extra time to
Speaker 1: almost treat it like a mini movie. But then the
Speaker 1: pace of episodic television, it just doesn't offer them the
Speaker 1: room to create I think the way that they want to, right,
Speaker 1: That's why it's a different It's almost like a I
Speaker 1: don't want to say cookie cutter, because I love some
Speaker 1: of the really great episodic directors we had on our show,
Speaker 1: but like it definitely is you get less time and
Speaker 1: less ownership of your vision.
Speaker 3: Well, the pilot, I think we shot for fourteen or
Speaker 3: fifteen days, Yeah, which was a long for a drama pilot.
Speaker 3: Then now it's nothing because the whole world has changed.
Speaker 3: But you know, a typical episode of Desperate was supposed
Speaker 3: to fit into eight days, and it never really did,
Speaker 3: so we ended up having second units.
Speaker 1: And we you know, okay, so since we're there, and
Speaker 1: since we're not going to spend five hours on this
Speaker 1: episode of the podcast, you don't know about it, even
Speaker 1: though I think there's stuff to fill it. But since
Speaker 1: we're there, I know, you and I when we were
Speaker 1: having dinner, you mentioned and I had kind of forgotten
Speaker 1: about this too when the thing kicked off. So when
Speaker 1: we got picked up and we re started shooting the season,
Speaker 1: that was in June or right June or yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Think it was probably June.
Speaker 1: And so it was, you know, it was shooting episodes
Speaker 1: of the show from June until September before we knew
Speaker 1: that it was a hit.
Speaker 3: It went on the air in October the beginning. It
Speaker 3: went on the air late, so the beginning of October.
Speaker 1: Okay, And so all that time, and you can talk
Speaker 1: to this better because you reminded me, and I think
Speaker 1: this is insane. In the beginning. You know, people think
Speaker 1: that actors are like so spoiled and so like they
Speaker 1: get all the glamour things. They had the housewives sharing
Speaker 1: a double trailer, like honeywagon kind of trailer, so like
Speaker 1: we just had these half room trailers that were connected.
Speaker 1: But because we were so far behind because it was
Speaker 1: such a huge show to shoot. They added a second unit,
Speaker 1: and the trailer would go with whoever was on the
Speaker 1: first unit, and the second unit wouldn't have a trailer,
Speaker 1: And so there were or a hairdresser or there.
Speaker 3: You'd have a hair dresser. You wouldn't have somebody who
Speaker 3: knew how to do your hair.
Speaker 1: This is unheard of for the leads of a show
Speaker 1: to not have the hairdresser and the makeup artist and
Speaker 1: their trailer with them when they're working on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a one off one day, can we
Speaker 1: get through this? It became a like and you remind
Speaker 1: I totally forgotten about this, and you reminded me of
Speaker 1: all this, and it just it brings back how from
Speaker 1: the beginning there was drama that that created that we
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with.
Speaker 3: There's no question. And I think part of what's interesting
Speaker 3: is is in retrospect, you know, the show was a
Speaker 3: massive hit once it hit the air, but if you
Speaker 3: go back and look at Disney and ABC in particular,
Speaker 3: they hadn't launched a successful show in five years. The
Speaker 3: company was losing probably hundreds of millions of dollars a
Speaker 3: year on pilots and TV shows that weren't getting picked
Speaker 3: up to future seasons. So from their point of view,
Speaker 3: you know, they they they were really struggling financially. And
Speaker 3: I went on to run a studio, so I understand
Speaker 3: the pressures of making your budget work and hitting your numbers.
Speaker 3: The thing that was interesting was we never had enough
Speaker 3: money in those first thirteen episodes to actually make the show.
Speaker 1: We finally have answered why I had my own wardrobe and.
Speaker 3: Why so there was never enough money? It was there
Speaker 3: was we were. We were George Perkins, who I know
Speaker 3: you guys have talked about who is our amazing line
Speaker 3: and who you know built the crew with Charlie Scurris.
Speaker 3: I mean there are two of like the nicest, most honest,
Speaker 3: hardworking people and super talented because they would try to
Speaker 3: figure out ways to make things work. But we were
Speaker 3: making that show with like scotch tape and holding it
Speaker 3: together any way we could.
Speaker 1: I put some on my boobs for that.
Speaker 3: Small house after we went into the say yes, it was.
Speaker 1: A very small amount of tape I was allowed to use.
Speaker 3: I mean, as I understand that you were the fearless
Speaker 3: one who kind of decided how you wanted to do it.
Speaker 1: I did because I mean my motivation though, and this
Speaker 1: is kind of how I look at everything was kind
Speaker 1: of in being considerate of the director of that. I
Speaker 1: wanted them to be able to shoot it from any
Speaker 1: angle that they I didn't want the steady cam guy
Speaker 1: to have to be like, oh I caught her underwear,
Speaker 1: that's not that SHOT's not going to work. You know.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be like, let me just make
Speaker 1: this easy on everybody.
Speaker 3: I'm amazed the camera crew could even pull focus that day.
Speaker 3: I mean everybody, everybody was, you know, in awe, and
Speaker 3: and the film speaks for itself. I mean, it's got
Speaker 3: to be one of the great comedy performance, isn't you.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you? So. Circling back to there wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of money there was, you feel like, how did that.
Speaker 6: Affect your experience, you know, in the studio and on set.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I was young, and I was
Speaker 3: in my mid thirties. I mean I'd produced you know,
Speaker 3: two pilots previously, and I had a show that had
Speaker 3: made sixteen episodes. But we really wanted this to work.
Speaker 3: And you do what you have to do, and you
Speaker 3: have to figure out what battles to fight, what battles
Speaker 3: not to fight, And it's like anything else in life.
Speaker 3: But we George and I were really holding the show
Speaker 3: together with the money we had. Every week was a fight.
Speaker 3: Every there was stuff with a studio breathe, you know,
Speaker 3: coming and like you know, standing there by the t rock,
Speaker 3: you know, to buy the to pull the plug you
Speaker 3: know on the generators. Wow, because we were shooting you
Speaker 3: know things next days. Yeah, And in fairness, we didn't
Speaker 3: do anything wrong. The show had a massive appetite. It
Speaker 3: was a big show, huge cast. I mean really unusual
Speaker 3: that you know, you'd be lucky to have two or
Speaker 3: three leads on a TV show. We had a bunch
Speaker 3: of leads. Then we had a bunch of co leads,
Speaker 3: and we had I think fourteen series in some capacity
Speaker 3: series regulars, whether they were a series regular in their
Speaker 3: deal or not, but we had to track them. Plus
Speaker 3: we had a bunch of young kids, which presents its
Speaker 3: own challenges because you can't shoot that. You can't work
Speaker 3: an eight hour day with a bunch of young kids,
Speaker 3: let alone a fourteen hour day. Yeah, And so at
Speaker 3: the time we were just doing everything we could to
Speaker 3: get to air because we thought that we had something
Speaker 3: unique and special and then fortunately, you know, the ratings
Speaker 3: came out and I think they were the biggest ratings
Speaker 3: in er It was enormous.
Speaker 4: Wow. So with that amount of oversight when it came
Speaker 4: to budgeting and things like that. I know we've we've
Speaker 4: talked about it from how it felt as actors on
Speaker 4: the show, and we've talked about like the little bits
Speaker 4: that we sort of surmised, Like we mentioned Terry and
Speaker 4: maybe Nicolette's nipples being a problem at one point that
Speaker 4: maybe you've got notes on Uh huh, do you have
Speaker 4: more to say on that?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think they were concerned about advertisers
Speaker 3: and they and so so and I at the time
Speaker 3: pushed back and I said, we're doing a show about women,
Speaker 3: but we don't like women's bodies. And you know, I
Speaker 3: didn't win that argument. And what we ended up doing
Speaker 3: was in post production blurring them out a little bit,
Speaker 3: or painting them out.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, wow, you had your nipples blurret out.
Speaker 6: I wonder who had that job.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: By the way, so the audience understands the women were
Speaker 3: wearing clothes, it's just you know, they wanted, you know,
Speaker 3: in scenes I guess where you didn't want to wear
Speaker 3: a bra. You didn't feel it was appropriate to.
Speaker 1: It was always wearing a bra. But I think when
Speaker 1: it's cold, your nipples get hard and then you know
Speaker 1: they poke out through the shirt. I mean what is
Speaker 1: interesting is as we were watching it, and maybe you
Speaker 1: listened to this, I did bring up like, wow, I
Speaker 1: kind of loosely remember being told can we put your
Speaker 1: nipples away somehow because they're causing a problem and it
Speaker 1: costs extra money to have to air brush them out,
Speaker 1: like and me thinking, you know, from my point of view,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that, Like that's not a big deal.
Speaker 1: But it's because I'm in my body, like I'm wearing
Speaker 1: a bra, I'm wearing a shirt like that feels normal
Speaker 1: to me. It did like asking me to put like,
Speaker 1: you know, gauze over my nipples or something like that,
Speaker 1: it starts to feel.
Speaker 3: Like what, I just have an issue with it. And
Speaker 3: in fairness, listen, I I can't say it enough. We're
Speaker 3: doing a show about women. There's nothing wrong with the
Speaker 3: woman's body. These are dressed women. This is not a
Speaker 3: nudity issue, right, So for me, it was something that
Speaker 3: you know, I lost that fight. You don't win fights
Speaker 3: with standards and practices. I've only won one in my
Speaker 3: entire career when I was at CBS, and it came
Speaker 3: back to bite me in the bus.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm curious. So you're for the first you know,
Speaker 2: thirteen episodes. You're doing this on a shoe string scotch
Speaker 2: tape budget. You don't know if it's going to be successful.
Speaker 2: Then the ratings start coming in, then the show blows up.
Speaker 2: How did that change your working experience?
Speaker 3: It helped, and it made everything harder because suddenly the cast,
Speaker 3: in particular, there was not a free moment of time.
Speaker 3: ABC had not had a hit in so long, and
Speaker 3: that year, as you guys remember, it's been written about,
Speaker 3: Bill Carter wrote a book called Desperate Networks, and it
Speaker 3: talked about how ABC went from fourth place to first place,
Speaker 3: and on the back of Desperate and loss, and then
Speaker 3: Gray's Anatomy came mid season, and so you know, suddenly
Speaker 3: we were so in demand. So we did two Oprah show,
Speaker 3: we did every weekend. You know, the girls were being
Speaker 3: in Forgive me for calling you the girls. I hope
Speaker 3: that's OK. They were back in twenty twenty two thousand
Speaker 3: and four, so I guess, you know, you gardeners can
Speaker 3: have you know, we could have pedophilia and not talk
Speaker 3: about it because it's two thousand and four, and God
Speaker 3: did that make me uncomfortable.
Speaker 5: Watching those Yeah.
Speaker 3: So we can come back to that. But but suddenly
Speaker 3: everybody is in demand. And you have to understand, ABC
Speaker 3: went from like not having any water running to being
Speaker 3: like gushing in success. And suddenly it didn't just translate
Speaker 3: to you know, for Desperate Housewives or Lost or Grays.
Speaker 3: It was also Good Morning America. So you know, Diane
Speaker 3: Sawyer did a special. They would they wanted everything they
Speaker 3: could get of the women, and and you know, I
Speaker 3: felt terrible at the time because you know, we forget
Speaker 3: that we were in a paparazzi era in two thousand
Speaker 3: and four. You guys had no privacy. You were followed
Speaker 3: off the studio lot, followed to your homes. I mean,
Speaker 3: you'd had success before, so you were aware of how
Speaker 3: to manage it.
Speaker 1: And we were followed home from the hospital when Emerson
Speaker 1: was born, like they've literally followed us in.
Speaker 3: And so you at least had like, you know, gates
Speaker 3: around you, you had a private area, you could go
Speaker 3: home to Marsha had a little picket fence, I mean,
Speaker 3: and they would just stare and shoot pictures of her
Speaker 3: through the windows. And so, you know, I don't think
Speaker 3: anybody was prepared to take care of you guys properly,
Speaker 3: to give you the rest you needed to make sure
Speaker 3: you had security. I mean, I think it would be
Speaker 3: done so differently. But we live in a world where
Speaker 3: we don't have mega hits like that anymore. There's no
Speaker 3: show that everybody watches at nine o'clock on Sunday night.
Speaker 4: Were there was conversations being had or not even I
Speaker 4: try to.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it was a different time. And again,
Speaker 3: I you know, it's it's hard because everybody felt like, well,
Speaker 3: they're lucky, like they're lucky because they're on a hit
Speaker 3: and this is great for them, and everybody feels lucky
Speaker 3: to be on a hit. But you could be lucky
Speaker 3: on a hit, and you can also be exhausted or
Speaker 3: be you know. You know, Marcia couldn't go to the supermarket,
Speaker 3: you know, she was being followed. She had to go
Speaker 3: in full hair and makeup because Papa Razzi were dying
Speaker 3: to get a shot of the women not looking like
Speaker 3: they were perfect and it was a lot of pressure forever.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 1: So you I know, you were talking about Danny Elfman
Speaker 1: and he only did the the trailer, I mean, the
Speaker 1: main title music. But I felt like, first of all
Speaker 1: Wassteria Lane itself was a character in the show as
Speaker 1: strong as any cast member, and I would love to
Speaker 1: know how Universal got chosen and how that street in
Speaker 1: particular became Wasteria Lane. But also, like I know, you
Speaker 1: were really involved with the music throughout the show, and
Speaker 1: I feel like that has such a central part in
Speaker 1: its success of it the way it looked. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us about that?
Speaker 3: Sure? So, I mean, I think going back to my
Speaker 3: initial statement about sort of American Beauty meets Edward Scissorhands,
Speaker 3: it was it created a picture or I had a
Speaker 3: vision for what the show should be. And in fairness
Speaker 3: to Mark, I mean Mark, I would say, if you
Speaker 3: look at our roles, he was the architect. He wrote
Speaker 3: this amazing script. And then, as you guys know, because
Speaker 3: you read a lot of scripts, somebody has to take
Speaker 3: that script and turn it into you know, film, and
Speaker 3: in television, you know, in a feature film, the director
Speaker 3: does that. In television the producers are much more involved.
Speaker 3: So it was we got very lucky that my previous
Speaker 3: show had gone down, because we inherited an amazing crew,
Speaker 3: and the crew stayed with the show for many, many years,
Speaker 3: and so those guys hit the ground running. So we
Speaker 3: had a brilliant art department. We already had a working
Speaker 3: relationship because I knew them well, and so we scouted
Speaker 3: a bunch of neighborhoods around LA and what quickly became
Speaker 3: a parent was we need to own a cult to
Speaker 3: sack and in success, nobody wants, you know, camera crews
Speaker 3: and people filming in their neighborhood at four o'clock in
Speaker 3: the morning. So then it really starts to narrow down.
Speaker 3: Where could we do this. We talked about building everything
Speaker 3: at Disney Range, okay, and and that wasn't going to
Speaker 3: be No, that didn't turn out to be practical. We
Speaker 3: looked at the Warner Brothers a lot, because they have
Speaker 3: that little lot of houses you know from sixties television,
Speaker 3: fifties and sixties television. And then you know, I said,
Speaker 3: why don't we go look at Universal and that street
Speaker 3: hadn't been touched. It was dilapidated. So one of the
Speaker 3: things we had to do was repaint and freshen up
Speaker 3: and dress an entire street, you know, and that's a
Speaker 3: multi acre set. I mean that again, TV shows at
Speaker 3: that time did not have the budgets they have now, right, so,
Speaker 3: you know, no one had made a Game of Thrones then,
Speaker 3: and so so the idea that we were going to
Speaker 3: dress up a whole neighborhood, paint every single house, find
Speaker 3: you know, and give it a look. And I know
Speaker 3: you as we're talking about some of the sets, some
Speaker 3: of those houses are just facades. There's nothing in them.
Speaker 3: And some of them we had to build sets and
Speaker 3: try to you know, put breeze I think dining room
Speaker 3: inside one of them, living room. And so we just
Speaker 3: kind of faked it until we got stage space.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because when did that happen? When did we get
Speaker 5: the stages?
Speaker 3: When? When when the show got picked up, we got
Speaker 3: more stages and we started building and we realized once
Speaker 3: the show became a hit, you know, the network realized
Speaker 3: it was in the studio, realized it was going to
Speaker 3: be around for a while.
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean talk about like sustaining like
Speaker 1: that with Steria, Lane is still on the Universal Tram tour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I mean, it's a highlight.
Speaker 5: It's a huge draw.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a huge draw. Isn't that crazy that you
Speaker 1: created this. I wouldn't say a neighborhood that didn't exist.
Speaker 3: I think we had an idea that, you know, and
Speaker 3: Mark and I actually did talk about the fact that
Speaker 3: we decided together that with Steria Lane, we were never
Speaker 3: going to give it a location, right, and and the
Speaker 3: sets were iconic, I mean, the network liked it. But
Speaker 3: then I would get phone calls where I get these
Speaker 3: panic phone calls where they'd see the dailies, which is
Speaker 3: the film that comes out every day. The street's too
Speaker 3: bright or it's too prettier, there's too many flowers. So
Speaker 3: I would, you know, So I would go, okay, and
Speaker 3: I would get in my golf cart and I would
Speaker 3: drive up from the production office, you know, putt putt
Speaker 3: putt up and around the hill and get into a
Speaker 3: stereo lane. I would literally remove one flower and I
Speaker 3: would and I would call the network back and I
Speaker 3: would say, listen, guys, you know totally hear you. I
Speaker 3: went up there myself. I pulled it back and you
Speaker 3: have to realize, like there's there's so much fear and
Speaker 3: anxiety that goes into a show before it goes on air, right,
Speaker 3: And this is true of every show I've ever worked on.
Speaker 3: There's just a tremendous amount of second guessing by everybody
Speaker 3: because who have you met who doesn't think they have
Speaker 3: a good opinion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just talking to my manager about this.
Speaker 2: There's so much scared filmmaking because especially you know, you
Speaker 2: only have so much money.
Speaker 6: Studios have mandates they want to meet.
Speaker 2: And everyone is like, how can we hit every box
Speaker 2: that we're supposed to hit and not offend anybody? And
Speaker 2: I mean, I think what's amazing is that you created
Speaker 2: something so distinct even with all of those factors.
Speaker 3: I think, listen, we had a vision. We had an
Speaker 3: amazing team of people, and it starts with mark script
Speaker 3: and that script to the you know, I rewatched the pilot,
Speaker 3: which I hadn't seen in twenty years. The script is
Speaker 3: so stellar. It has so many good move moments. Every
Speaker 3: single scene in that script does something for the show.
Speaker 3: And to set up four characters plus Edie plus each
Speaker 3: of the guys, and you knew who every character was,
Speaker 3: every adult character was in that pilot, and then you
Speaker 3: I mean Andrea. I mean, my god, your performances were
Speaker 3: are It's funny because now I've met the grown woman,
Speaker 3: But to think about that, you were just a kid,
Speaker 3: and you were so natural and so funny and so
Speaker 3: good and so charming, and the relationship you had with
Speaker 3: your mom where you kind of knew all her insecurities
Speaker 3: and loved her anyway and brought that. And so to
Speaker 3: Mark's credit, I mean, he wrote a masterpiece. My job
Speaker 3: then became to keep everybody from touching the script before
Speaker 3: we started shooting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, were there people at the studio that wanted it change.
Speaker 3: After the read through, which was three days before we filmed,
Speaker 3: they gave a bunch of notes, and I remember the
Speaker 3: studio had brought me in and I had to turn
Speaker 3: to my friends at the studio and say, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: you don't get to give notes now. And they said
Speaker 3: what I said, We're locked. I mean, the director is prepped,
Speaker 3: You've had the script for nine months. Now is not
Speaker 3: the time to give notes. And I think they were
Speaker 3: initially concerned about Breeze dialogue was very heightened to a
Speaker 3: Los Angeles audience. You know, she's pleased as punch, her
Speaker 3: little her little expressions in euphemisms. I think to Los
Speaker 3: Angeles executives felt unnatural, and to Mark's credit, like he
Speaker 3: was his ear was leaning and picking up something else,
Speaker 3: which was you know, the genius of the show is
Speaker 3: that people in Blue states could watch it and think
Speaker 3: they were watching something that was satirical, and people in
Speaker 3: red states could watch the exact same show and connected
Speaker 3: the characters in a totally different way. And I think
Speaker 3: Mark's neutrality about how he wrote his characters allowed that
Speaker 3: to happen.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is really a good observation. I really agree.
Speaker 1: And I but I have to say I've said a
Speaker 1: lot of Marcia Marsham Marshall because she's so great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I can't think of anybody else that could have
Speaker 1: taken those, as you say, kind of strange still more
Speaker 1: stilted words and somehow ground them into a humanity that
Speaker 1: actually came out of her mouth and made you believe
Speaker 1: it now.
Speaker 3: Because on one level her character seems really heightened. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And on another, to your point, you you really connect
Speaker 3: with her and she breaks your heart. I mean, you
Speaker 3: know when Rex asked for a divorce and through the
Speaker 3: whole first season and you know, he she really really
Speaker 3: I think was approaching everything as this is this is
Speaker 3: a real person. This is somebody who who has who's
Speaker 3: done everything in her life that she thought was right
Speaker 3: and was going to make her happy and she wasn't.
Speaker 3: And again, that was the genius of the show, that
Speaker 3: each of the women had gone down a path before
Speaker 3: before the show started and thought they were going to
Speaker 3: find happiness, and that each of them we meet them
Speaker 3: in this moment in time where each of them is
Speaker 3: confronting what does happy look like? And I think that's
Speaker 3: why the show resonated not just with women in America,
Speaker 3: but also with a lot of men. And at one
Speaker 3: point we had that crazy thing where Edie did the
Speaker 3: Monday Night Football spot that caused.
Speaker 1: Oh, oh my gosh.
Speaker 5: Oh wait, no, there was a thing in a locker
Speaker 5: room right, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: I totally forgot about this thing and it blew up.
Speaker 3: But when they came and pitched it to us, ABC,
Speaker 3: Monday Night Football called me and said, we want to
Speaker 3: do this thing, and you know, we want to help
Speaker 3: you know your show, and we have more men watching
Speaker 3: our show than you have watching Monday Night Football, So
Speaker 3: let's just reset the conversation.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Wait, well, I'm sort of loosely remembering this. She did
Speaker 1: a commercial in a.
Speaker 5: Towel in a locker room.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was a promo and I haven't I haven't
Speaker 3: watched it. I can't. But it caused it caused a scandal.
Speaker 3: It was sexual, you know. And I don't think she
Speaker 3: did what was scripted. It wasn't anything she did. It
Speaker 3: was what everybody decided that she should do.
Speaker 4: And it was because of it being on Family Night football, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, that's why it was so scandalous.
Speaker 5: I don't think it in and of itself was very offensive.
Speaker 1: Do you have like when you sit this far away
Speaker 1: and you like look at it and you go like.
Speaker 5: I did that.
Speaker 1: I was a part of that. Do you have things
Speaker 1: that you that like either scenes or moments or or
Speaker 1: or or struggles that you conquered over that like you
Speaker 1: you are proud of them? Or and do you have
Speaker 1: things that you like just want to be like, I'm
Speaker 1: so glad that I can just put that to rest
Speaker 1: and walk away.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you know, Desperate was was a wild
Speaker 3: time in my life because I was very young as
Speaker 3: a producer and as an executive, and it it allowed me.
Speaker 3: I'm grateful that that script came into my life and
Speaker 3: allowed me to showcase what I was capable of do it,
Speaker 3: just like the script allowed you guys as actors to
Speaker 3: showcase what you were able to do. Mark and I
Speaker 3: always had different visions of the show, and tonally, his
Speaker 3: taste was more comedic than mine. And what ended up
Speaker 3: happening over the course of the first season was, you know,
Speaker 3: my I was cutting those first thirteen upsodes because Mark
Speaker 3: was so far behind in writing that basically the editorial
Speaker 3: fell to me. And then, you know, and there were
Speaker 3: times where there'd be a gag or something that he
Speaker 3: loved that I just thought was silly, and I'd take
Speaker 3: it out, and so there was a schism forming between
Speaker 3: the two of us. Case wise, from the beginning.
Speaker 1: I understand that I mean I yeah, and I understand
Speaker 1: that I mean I as as I said, like I
Speaker 1: feel like tonally it was could be very good. And
Speaker 1: then there were definitely episodes, maybe not so much in
Speaker 1: the first season, but like it you know, would dip
Speaker 1: into like this doesn't really make sense or this is
Speaker 1: too can't be well.
Speaker 4: It's hard work to maintain that specific tightrope of that
Speaker 4: balance between the comedy, the drama, the mystery, the surrealism.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not an easy thing to maintain, imagine
Speaker 4: from all different sides, but it is the thing that
Speaker 4: was so special about the show. And I think that
Speaker 4: so many people, even me at thirteen, I remember people
Speaker 4: telling me after they watched the show that the tone
Speaker 4: was so unique and people just loved that about it.
Speaker 3: And what's interesting is, so I watched the pilot again,
Speaker 3: and the pilot had a different composer than our series composer,
Speaker 3: and so one of the things that we had to
Speaker 3: do was invent a new sound because dramas on TV
Speaker 3: were scored with drama soundtracks and comedies were scored with
Speaker 3: comedy soundtracks, and Desperate had to let the audience know
Speaker 3: that things were ironic at times, or things were not
Speaker 3: what they seemed, or a character who's doing something straight
Speaker 3: down the middle, Oh, you've got to think about that.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, the composer of my previous show
Speaker 3: is a guy named Steve Jablonski. Steve was introduced to
Speaker 3: me through Hans Zimmer, who was the greatest of the
Speaker 3: great and Steve was composing our score and he had
Speaker 3: done a demo for Desperate Housewives, and I think Mark
Speaker 3: had felt at the time that I had hired too
Speaker 3: many of my production people. And by the way, in
Speaker 3: fairness to him, this was his project. He got saddled
Speaker 3: with an entire crew, he got saddled with an art department,
Speaker 3: I mean, and and so he chose a composer for
Speaker 3: the pilot, and we realized that wasn't the right composer.
Speaker 3: He chose another composer, realized it wasn't the right composer.
Speaker 3: And then what ended up happening is really funny. Steve
Speaker 3: Jablonski's music was in the Avid, which is the editing
Speaker 3: machine that we could, and some editor found these tracks
Speaker 3: and knew none of the politics. Oh wow, And so
Speaker 3: he cut the episode that begins with going into the Furnace. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, re insiderated. Uh, Steve had cut. The editor
Speaker 3: had cut Steve's music, and Mark and Iron and edited.
Speaker 3: Mark quen this music. This is the music. Who did this?
Speaker 3: This is perfect? Oh and and the poor editor turns
Speaker 3: and goes he looks in Steve Jablonski and Mark just
Speaker 3: looks it. Uh oh, But Steve got the job. And
Speaker 3: then Steve and I. So what happened is, you guys
Speaker 3: would shoot all day. We'd go to set. I would
Speaker 3: be there at call, which is like six in the morning,
Speaker 3: six thirty. We would wrap at six to seven to eight.
Speaker 3: I would then go into editorial to check on the scripts.
Speaker 3: Then I would drive from the Universal all the way
Speaker 3: to Steve's house in Santa Monica and we would And
Speaker 3: he liked to work late at night, so from ten
Speaker 3: or eleven at night till two or three in the morning,
Speaker 3: we'd work on the music.
Speaker 6: So did you not sleep for a year? Nine months?
Speaker 1: Wow? Wow?
Speaker 5: It is like having a baby. Then it is.
Speaker 4: It's like you're building growing something for nine months, you know.
Speaker 3: Like I said, it was magical because the work was
Speaker 3: so good. We all wanted we all wanted success. Everybody
Speaker 3: showed up. I mean I watched Terry come to work
Speaker 3: incredibly sick sometimes and like I'm looking in the truck
Speaker 3: with il I think she's good. I mean, we should
Speaker 3: send her home, and she would say she's fine. She
Speaker 3: would literally like hobble to set because she had a
Speaker 3: huge fever. And then the minute they called action, the
Speaker 3: magic showed up, the comedy showed up. It was like
Speaker 3: nothing was wrong, and they'd say cut and you'd collapse
Speaker 3: into your chair. And I don't know how you did it,
Speaker 3: but you always managed to when when the work was happening.
Speaker 3: That's what mattered.
Speaker 1: I seem to recall Felicity saying to me once like,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with you? You're always sick? And I at
Speaker 1: the time I remember sort of feeling like, kind of
Speaker 1: offended because I think of myself as a healthy person.
Speaker 1: But when I look back on it now, I go, Yeah,
Speaker 1: every mom I know that has a child between four
Speaker 1: and ten years old is constantly sick because your kid
Speaker 1: is bringing home every virus every other day from kindergarten
Speaker 1: in first grade and second grade. And so yeah, I
Speaker 1: probably was sick, and Emerson, it was your fault.
Speaker 6: Well, well I am don't.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry, but I'm so happy that you have
Speaker 2: such deep mental and physical fortitude that you were able
Speaker 2: to rise up.
Speaker 4: Well to rise up, Okay, I wanted because we had
Speaker 4: mentioned obviously, Terry and I hadn't really rewatched the show
Speaker 4: at all basically until we started this podcast.
Speaker 5: Emerson of course is experiencing it for the first time.
Speaker 6: And what a show it's been.
Speaker 1: Yes, our finale, see.
Speaker 4: There's so far there have been some really standout moments
Speaker 4: from the first season. We've talked about obviously Terry's amazing
Speaker 4: naked locked out moment, and the dinner party scene from
Speaker 4: the same episode episode seven was a really big highlight
Speaker 4: that we really loved. There's that amazing scene with Felicity,
Speaker 4: the Lynette scene, the mental breakdown in the kitchen, that
Speaker 4: felt like a really strong moment from the show. And
Speaker 4: I know you said you haven't rewatched it really but
Speaker 4: maybe did in advance of this.
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't watch seven again, but I remember
Speaker 3: it really well because it was the first time that
Speaker 3: we actually veered from comedy into serious draw and that
Speaker 3: that adderall storyline about a mom just wanting to compete
Speaker 3: and just wanting to do good, which was I think
Speaker 3: so relatable to so many women. But you know, to
Speaker 3: the writer's credit, they took it down its natural path
Speaker 3: and she finally had a breakdown, and again the network
Speaker 3: was very concerned about this is a comedy, like what
Speaker 3: are you guys doing? And when that's and that show
Speaker 3: got a huge response from others and from women. I
Speaker 3: think people really felt like they could see something that
Speaker 3: rung true in their own life. And so from that
Speaker 3: point on, I think we knew we could go where
Speaker 3: we needed to go with the women as long as
Speaker 3: it was based in something real.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's that's amazing. And I will tell you what's
Speaker 1: real and true our love for you, Michael Edlstein. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being so generous with your time
Speaker 1: and stories. It's been amazing and we will all be
Speaker 1: coming back. Later this week, we will jump into episode
Speaker 1: twenty three, the finale of season one. One wonderful day,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that it will be a wonderful day
Speaker 1: as we meet some new neighbors on Westeria Lane and
Speaker 1: we tie up loose ends. Or will we be able
Speaker 1: to tie up loose ends. You'll have to wait and
Speaker 1: see and join us next time because we are desperately
Speaker 1: devoted to you.