49 Fun Facts About Desperate Housewives

Which Desperate Housewives lead was best known as Lois Lane on Lois & Clark before playing Susan Mayer?

Teri Hatcher went from Lois Lane to Bond girl Paris Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies, a part Monica Bellucci also tested for before the studio insisted on an American actress.

Which actress plays the perfectionist homemaker Bree Van de Kamp on Desperate Housewives?

Marcia Cross first read for the narrator, Mary Alice, before creator Marc Cherry insisted that she try out for Bree instead.

Which actress plays Gabrielle Solis, the former model, on Desperate Housewives?

Eva Longoria was the first lead cast, after admitting at her audition that she had read only her own part of the script; Marc Cherry said that was when he knew she was right.

Who voices Mary Alice Young, the narrator of Desperate Housewives from beyond the grave?

Brenda Strong was a late replacement: the pilot had already been shot with another actress as narrator, and the part was recast after ABC picked the series up.

What is the name of the fictional town where Desperate Housewives is set?

Fairview was designed as an everyplace: the production designer watched old family sitcoms such as Father Knows Best to give its streets a classic American look.

Which event in the Desperate Housewives pilot sets the whole series in motion?

A neighbor's suicide opens the story: Mary Alice Young shoots herself, and her friends only start digging once they find a blackmail note among her belongings.

What trade does new neighbor Mike Delfino ply when he arrives on Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives?

Plumber is only half the story: Mike has really moved in to find out what happened to his missing ex-girlfriend, hired by her father.

How far forward does the story of Desperate Housewives jump between seasons 4 and 5?

Five years pass at the end of season 4, a leap Marc Cherry later said worked well because it let every character start from scratch.

Which actress joined Desperate Housewives in season 7 as Renee Perry, Lynette's old college friend?

Vanessa Williams came straight from Ugly Betty, which had just ended, as producers hunted for a saucy successor to Edie Britt, gone since season 5.

What does Susan Mayer do for a living when Desperate Housewives begins?

Children's book illustrator Susan also writes them, starting with Ants in My Picnic Basket; when money runs short in season 7 she takes a job modelling lingerie on a website.

Which ABC hit launched in 2005 in the hour straight after Desperate Housewives?

Grey's Anatomy was a four-week stand-in for Boston Legal that rated so well ABC kept it in the slot behind Desperate Housewives.

Marc Cherry was best known for writing and producing which sitcom before he created Desperate Housewives?

The Golden Girls had made his name, but his Housewives script was still turned down by CBS, NBC, HBO and Lifetime before ABC bought it.

Which actor plays Orson Hodge, the man Bree marries in season 3 of Desperate Housewives?

Kyle MacLachlan's Orson turns out to be the driver who ran Mike Delfino down in the season 2 finale, and he later goes to prison for it.

Which Desperate Housewives lead won the 2005 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series?

Felicity Huffman beat two of her own co-stars, nominated in the same category that night; the fourth lead was left out, which Marc Cherry called a 'horrendous error'.

Which Oscar-nominated actress played Betty Applewhite, who keeps a prisoner in her basement on Desperate Housewives?

Alfre Woodard admitted, when Marc Cherry rang to offer her the part, that she had never seen his show; he wanted her simply because he liked her in everything.

Dana Delany turned down Bree three times, then joined Desperate Housewives in season 4 as which character?

Katherine Mayfair finally brought her to Wisteria Lane; Delany had refused Bree because the part was too much like the one she had just played on Pasadena.

The murder of whose stepfather, Alejandro, is the cover-up that drives the final season of Desperate Housewives?

Gabrielle's husband Carlos kills Alejandro with a candlestick in the season 7 finale, and the friends hide the body while a dinner party goes on around them.

Desperate Housewives overtook which series as the longest-running hour-long show with all-female leads?

Charmed set the mark with 178 episodes, so Housewives, which ended on 180, edged past it only on the night of its two-hour finale.

The two-hour Desperate Housewives finale aired in 2012 on which American holiday?

Mother's Day, May 13, suited a farewell to four wives and mothers, and the two hours packed in a wedding, a birth and a death.

Kathryn Joosten won two Emmys for playing which Desperate Housewives resident of Wisteria Lane?

Karen McCluskey made a star of a late starter: Joosten had been a psychiatric nurse and did not take up acting until she was 42.

Which First Lady joked at a White House correspondents' dinner, "Ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife"?

Laura Bush told the 2005 dinner that her husband was sound asleep by nine o'clock, leaving her to watch Desperate Housewives with the vice president's wife.

How does Edie Britt die in season 5 of Desperate Housewives?

Electrocution: Edie survives crashing her car, then steps out onto a live power line, and she narrates a later episode from beyond the grave in Mary Alice's place.

Where do Lynette and Tom Scavo end up living after the Desperate Housewives finale?

A New York penthouse overlooking Central Park is the reward: Lynette moves east to become a CEO, and the couple grow old there with six grandchildren.

Who sent the blackmail note found among Mary Alice Young's belongings on Desperate Housewives?

Martha Huber, the lane's nosiest neighbor, pays for it: Paul Young kills her when he finds out, and her sister Felicia then arrives to learn what happened.

Which illness is Lynette Scavo diagnosed with at the end of season 3 of Desperate Housewives?

Hodgkin's lymphoma: Lynette hides her chemotherapy under wigs to dodge her neighbors' pity, while her estranged mother Stella moves in to help.

Marc Cherry conceived Desperate Housewives while watching news coverage of which criminal case with his mother?

Andrea Yates had drowned her children, and when Cherry asked how any mother could be that desperate, his own mother replied, 'I've been there.'

Which composer wrote the Emmy-winning opening theme of Desperate Housewives?

Danny Elfman, who also wrote The Simpsons theme, supplied only the title music; he left the first episodes' score to his old Oingo Boingo bandmate Steve Bartek.

The fictional hometown of Desperate Housewives lies in which equally fictional state?

Eagle State is printed on the license plates, but it sits nowhere in particular: the production designer wanted 'neither a red state nor a blue state'.

Most Desperate Housewives episode titles are taken from the songs and lyrics of which composer?

Stephen Sondheim was creator Marc Cherry's habit: he named episodes after songs such as 'The Ladies Who Lunch', 'Children Will Listen' and 'Every Day a Little Death'.

What is the title of the final episode of Desperate Housewives?

Finishing the Hat ends on a poker game at which the four friends vow it will not be their last together; the narrator then reveals that it was.

The Wisteria Lane set of Desperate Housewives sits on whose Hollywood backlot?

Universal Studios won out only after the makers had scouted every suburb within 30 miles of Los Angeles and decided no real street would put up with a series.

Desperate Housewives avoided filming one house on its street in season 1 because it was too recognizable from which sitcom?

The Munsters had lived in it, so the house stayed out of shot until it was completely remodeled as the Applewhite home for season 2.

Which episode of Desperate Housewives drew the show's biggest audience, more than 30 million viewers?

The first-season finale drew 30.62 million, capping a debut year that ended fourth in the season's ratings; the show's own farewell seven years later drew about a third of that.

How did Nicollette Sheridan's 2012 Desperate Housewives case end before a jury?

A mistrial: the jury deadlocked, and before a retrial could begin an appeal court ruled that she had not been fired at all, because her contract had simply not been renewed.

Nicollette Sheridan, in character as Edie Britt, appeared with which NFL star in a controversial 2004 Monday Night Football intro?

Terrell Owens played opposite her in full team uniform; ABC apologized, but the FCC ruled the skit broke no decency rules because it had no nudity or foul language.

On Desperate Housewives, Bree Van de Kamp is a card-carrying member of which organization?

The National Rifle Association card fits Bree, a firearms collector beneath the pearls: given a wartime Luger by a suitor, she takes him to a farm to teach him to shoot.

In the Desperate Housewives finale flash-forward, Bree is elected to the legislature of which state?

Kentucky: Bree moves to Louisville with her third husband, Trip, the lawyer who defended her in court, and he encourages her to go into politics.

With whom is Gabrielle Solis having an affair when Desperate Housewives begins?

Her teenage gardener, John Rowland, was recast after the pilot had been shot; the director's diary says the change was made 'to add some male sex appeal'.

Who kills Mike Delfino in the final season of Desperate Housewives?

A loan shark named Donny guns Mike down outside his own home, in revenge for Mike getting in the way of his dealings with Ben and Renee.

Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry made a cameo in the series finale playing what?

A mover: Cherry and fellow producer Bob Daily turned up as the two removal men emptying Susan's house as she left the lane for good.

Which actress's company set up Wisteria Lane, a Desperate Housewives offshoot announced in 2025?

Kerry Washington's company Simpson Street took it to Onyx Collective as a reimagining with new characters, and creator Marc Cherry was not part of the pitch.

Under what name did Mary Alice Young live before she moved to Wisteria Lane on Desperate Housewives?

Angela Forrest was a nurse in Utah who illegally bought an addict's baby and fled to start again under a new name; years later she killed the mother, who had tracked them down.

Who causes the death of Bree's husband Rex at the end of the first season of Desperate Housewives?

A lovesick pharmacist named George tampers with Rex's heart prescriptions to clear his way to Bree, and Rex dies believing his own wife poisoned him.

Kathryn Joosten died in 2012 of which illness, weeks after her Desperate Housewives character did?

Lung cancer: Joosten, a two-time survivor, agreed with Marc Cherry that her character would die of cancer in the finale, and she died just 20 days after it aired.

Who played Mary Alice in the original, unaired version of the Desperate Housewives pilot?

Sheryl Lee filmed the part before producers recast it; her replacement put the change down to taste: 'instead of vanilla they wanted chocolate.'

Which disaster tears through Wisteria Lane midway through season 4 of Desperate Housewives?

A tornado destroys homes and lives across two episodes, and Bree's house is so badly damaged that she and Orson have to move in with Susan and Mike.

On which game show was Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry a winning contestant before he moved to Hollywood?

The $100,000 Pyramid winnings went with him to Hollywood, where his first job was as personal assistant to Designing Women star Dixie Carter.

What was the name of the official Desperate Housewives fragrance that Coty launched in 2006?

Forbidden Fruit echoes the show's titles, where Eve picks an apple and a giant one flattens Adam; the scent itself blended apple with wisteria, the flower of the famous lane.

At a 2006 ChildLine charity auction, a walk-on part on the show fetched £17,000, beating which item?

That year a survey of twenty countries ranked it the third-most-watched TV series in the world.