TRANSCRIPT 🔗
00:00:01
Speaker 1: Hi, Welcome to Desperately Devoted the Ultimate Desperate Housewives rewatch, hosted by me, Terry Hatcher, my on screen daughter Andrea Bowen, and my real life daughter Emerson Tenny. We are so lucky and blessed this week to have the incredible Doug Savant here with us telling us.
00:00:20
Speaker 2: To talk about the show and his experience. And thank you so much for being here with you.
00:00:25
Speaker 3: I am thrilled to be here and thrilled to be back with you ladies, and now with Emerson all grown up.
00:00:29
Speaker 4: It's fantastic.
00:00:31
Speaker 5: It is so amazing. You look amazing. I just every time we see somebody from the show, or even when we're just watching the episodes now, memories just come flooding back, and I don't know, maybe it's it's time, but I just find everyone was so brilliant and genius and just I just have so much love. It's just I know I'm on zoom, but I feel like I'm in the room. I want to just grab you by the cheek. It's so great to see you, and that's.
00:01:02
Speaker 6: Great to see so welcome.
00:01:03
Speaker 4: It's great to see you.
00:01:05
Speaker 3: It's great to be seen by you and with you and be with you, but yeah, I as you've gone back, like are what are your feelings?
00:01:13
Speaker 5: It's been really fun because Emerson's basically never seen the show before, and we haven't seen it in such a long time that, like I said, you know, I find myself going, oh my god, I forgot that.
00:01:22
Speaker 7: I forgot that, I forgot that.
00:01:24
Speaker 5: You know. But one of the things that was standing out to us very early on, and I know, I'm so excited to talk to you about this is you know, there was so much obviously hype around the show and around the idea of housewives, which mostly focused on the women, and when you step away from it for as long as we have and we go back, I feel by the third episode, the men, I mean, I think I came in to discuss our podcast and I was like, you guys, aren't the men just like jumping off the screen at you?
00:02:00
Speaker 6: Like, I.
00:02:02
Speaker 5: Have so much kind of curiosity and compassion for the character development and the individual differences uniqueness between these men. And also I have so many questions about what it was like to try to play it. But let me just start there that in hindsight, I feel like the men are landing in a very strong way. Do you guys feel that way.
00:02:29
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I's second that it's so exciting and nice to have you here because we have been discussing amongst the three of us just how strong the husband's point of view comes in, starting around episode three particularly, but continuing on through the first season.
00:02:45
Speaker 5: I mean, how did you can we just even go to like how did you even get the show? Like did you know Mark?
00:02:50
Speaker 6: Or how what was?
00:02:52
Speaker 5: Really?
00:02:52
Speaker 6: Go back?
00:02:53
Speaker 3: Okay, really go back? So I went into a no, just a standard audition. It was another audition, and the first thing that Mark Cherry said to me jumps out of his seat and he says, I wrote the first thing that your wife was ever in.
00:03:07
Speaker 4: So my.
00:03:09
Speaker 3: Wife, when she, you know, was starting launching her career, she was part of a touring company of the Young Americans and which Mark was, and so Mark had written like this sort of musical thing, and Laura was there and so she sang and she did this this thing with Mark. So that was That's how Mark introduced himself to me.
00:03:29
Speaker 2: Welcome. That's an ingratiating way to meet something.
00:03:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then of course I auditioned. It was Charlie McDougal, the our pilot director, And the interesting thing about the process for me was I was coming into the pilot as a guest. I was not a contracted a series regular. I was a guest star. So I got the Desperate Housewives pilot as a guest and it was the only husband that didn't have a serious regular role, and in fact, I had to pass on a on a CSI there were at the same time, and I thought, I'm gonna I'm gonna go with this Desperate Housewives thing, and and then magically the show goes, you know. And I thought from reading the pilot that it was outstanding that I saw something in it, and I hope that we all did that, that there was a duality that there was. There was seriousness there, but there was this also farcical side or a soap side that people could engage with it on many levels. And having come from Melrose's place many years before, that was something that I noted in that audience too. There was people who are in on the joke and then people who just wanted to simply be in for the soap opera aspects of it. But then we got picked up and that's when the real drama started. Because the studio called he said, we want we want some want to come back as a guest. We wanted you to come back as a guest for for six episodes the first we were picked up, where we picked up for nine or thirteen.
00:05:11
Speaker 6: I forget, I don't really I might have.
00:05:15
Speaker 5: Season.
00:05:16
Speaker 4: Well we didn't get the backward I know that, I know, I know that.
00:05:18
Speaker 3: And so they said and we said, okay, well, you know great, you know I'm interested in doing the show. But they just made it awful. They were we're not going to pay him another nickel. We said, well, is there would you maybe be willing to offer some contract. No, we never do that. Well that's interesting because Nicole at Sheridan was a guest star on the pilot, but she was up for the contract, and so I ended up. They made it so hateful that I ended up passing on the show.
00:05:46
Speaker 6: Oh my god.
00:05:46
Speaker 3: And I said, I said, I'll go out and I'll get six guest stars myself of other shows.
00:05:51
Speaker 4: I'm not doing this.
00:05:51
Speaker 3: They never said. They never came to me and said, we think you're great. We just don't have any money. We don't know if
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the shows hit yet. We don't you know, they didn't play any of that they said, we're not paying him another nickel.
00:06:02
Speaker 4: I don't care if we have to reshoot the.
00:06:03
Speaker 3: Thing, And I thought wow, And so I thought, wow, you just go right ahead.
00:06:09
Speaker 4: Thanks. Yeah, I know, Terry.
00:06:11
Speaker 5: I'm going to brace interrupt for one second, and I'm going to circle back to something our listeners may have picked up on. This is why I wore my own wardrobe.
00:06:19
Speaker 8: Probably, yes, we talked about this in the pilot.
00:06:23
Speaker 5: I'm just thinking that all of these things are trickling down into some sort of like they were not prepared for what it actually took to shoot what they wrote, and we.
00:06:34
Speaker 8: Found all these moments where I was like, Mom, isn't that your shirt? Like didn't I end up borrowing that? I still have that purse today? And she said, yeah, they were not prepared to dress five leading women.
00:06:46
Speaker 5: Anyways, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but I just know it's crazy to hear how that.
00:06:50
Speaker 6: Yes, so you may not know the also awful, So go ahead.
00:06:54
Speaker 4: You may not know.
00:06:55
Speaker 3: The end of the story is Mark Cherry called me and said, Doug, is it true that you're not doing it? You're not going to do our show? And I said, Mark, they made they made it horrible long story short. Mark said, please, let's get them out of this. I'll negotiate. I'll negotiate with you. We don't have any money. We're you know, we we we love you. We thought you were great on the pilot. He said, all the nice right things. And I said, okay, let's you know, can we just make something more like than more than just like Top of Show? Like musicians, if they're a really good musician and they get a studio gig there or an album they'll get, they'll get double scale or something like just pay me double scale something, throw me a bone, he goes, let me go. They said, oh no, no, we never do that. And I said, okay, So I said, okay, I tell you what, Mark, I thank you. I appreciate that. I want to do the show. I'll come in and I'll do the first six. And they had some number on the backside too. I said, I'll do it, and I'll do it for Top of Show. But you're the reason you're saying this is because we don't note the show is a hit yet and we don't have the money. So if the show is a hit and you go a second season, whether you kill tom Off or not you don't want me on the show. You need to pay me for the second season. Just if the show's a hit, I'll go, he said. He said, oh, Mark said, I can do that. I will definitely do that. He called me back and said, oh, they said, we never do that.
00:08:14
Speaker 8: I feel like I hear this all the time from his studios.
00:08:18
Speaker 1: We never.
00:08:18
Speaker 3: Mark Cherry then uttered these words to me which made me take the job. I give you my word as a Christian man, if the season goes, you'll be there. And to his eternal credit, he kept his word. He Mark Cherry is a fantastic human being who he gave me the best eight years of my life, my professional life. I adored this experience. I adored this show. I wouldn't change it for anything. My trip as you girls were like blowing up on every magazine cover in the world, and the studio was lavishing lovely you know tokens of their affection on you. I was just a guest star sitting there, like to know, keeping my fingers. Grassed that Mark. Mark kept his word, and he did then more so because we had another seven years.
00:09:20
Speaker 2: Yeah after that, it's astonishing. I thought people are going to find that your origin story is so fascinating because Tom becomes.
00:09:27
Speaker 5: Such a staple of the show.
00:09:29
Speaker 2: The idea that initially you weren't going to be on that regularly, you were just kind of coming in occasionally, and then the risk that might have you not having been on the show for as long as you were is just amazing to hear.
00:09:44
Speaker 6: I'm so glad.
00:09:45
Speaker 8: I'm so glad that he kept his word too, because I have to say Tom and Lynnett are my favorite couple on the show. And I mean, even in all of the chaos of all of the kids. And we've talked a lot about the baby who comes in and out of the first episodes, we don't see for me five episodes. But something that we've talked about a lot, especially in regards to your performance, is on the page, Tom could come across as so oblivious to his wife's struggles and he's gone at work, and you know she's sort of resentful of him. But you play the character in such a way that feels so disarmingly charming and present and kind that even when the actual words Tom is saying feel like I cannot believe this man is saying it, there's something believably charming and endearing about it.
00:10:35
Speaker 3: Did you, Can I first acknowledge I never tire of hearing that, And can.
00:10:43
Speaker 5: I just acknowledge how wonderful it is that my daughter is such a generous and articulate human.
00:10:49
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, it's true. It's really, I mean, it is true.
00:10:53
Speaker 5: I am true. Yeah, no, and it is. It is true that you really added layers that in some sense, you know what I mean, just weren't there, you know, and and and without that, I think I think Lynette's.
00:11:12
Speaker 7: Ability to do what she needed to do would have.
00:11:16
Speaker 5: Been much harder. I thought some of the choices you made were incredibly brave because they were you were committed to the cluelessness in a way that must have felt very awkward, because I think I said this in one of our episodes a couple of weeks ago, I said, there is no way Doug treats his wife like that like that. You know, I guarantee you, I guarantee you.
00:11:41
Speaker 4: You know that I'm not allowing you what to come in for a postmark? Yeah?
00:11:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I Terry, I thought, I, you know, you were reticent to say that about Tom's either
cluelessness or I thank you that was You're being kind. But no, there was a Tom. What I heard while I was on the show. In the first I had women come out to me and say, you are playing my husband. But because Tom, I believe was a good guy, he just didn't know what to do. He was he was like, oh, and then would you tell me? Of course, yeah, of course I'll do.
00:12:16
Speaker 5: I feel like when I said clueless, I didn't mean idiot. I meant more like just unaware. Sure as the second Tom, the second Tom became aware, he tried to do something about it.
00:12:31
Speaker 6: Oh, I wanted to help. Yeah, he was always absolutely and he.
00:12:34
Speaker 3: Came from the place I used to say this and this happy wife, happy life. That's and there's many there are many, many, many men who lived this way. And yeah, so he might not have got it right, you know on the first take, you know, like what and then but then he would rise to.
00:12:51
Speaker 2: The occasion and you listened, I mean Tom, Tom listened to his wife when she would say, hey, I actually need something from you.
00:12:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Lynette, Lynette, come on, let's see. Lenette was hardcore. I mean she you know. That's really what I loved about the portrayal of this marriage ontellivigionce I thought it was really a good portrayal of a not perfect marriage, but a really good, strong marriage, and that wall things aren't always perfect. They stayed together early or early early, they really you know, they really stuck together, and I think that they had a good I think it was a good representation of marriage in you know, in the media.
00:13:45
Speaker 5: Do you have scenes, I mean, it's long, it's it's I would imagine maybe you don't remember, because I know, eight seasons is a long time, and I'm finding myself going, I don't even remember shooting that, you know, but do you have scenes that stick out in your brain that were particularly rewarding or challenging.
00:14:06
Speaker 6: Or humiliating you go, yeah.
00:14:09
Speaker 5: Back, and you go, I'm really proud of that. Like I would use the example of me getting locked out of the house naked and this sort of like physical comedy I did involved in that, as I would look at that as like a highlight not just my execution, but the opportunity itself that Mark wrote for me to even.
00:14:26
Speaker 3: Do that, right, but that really you execute it on the highest level. You know, somebody can put it on the page, as your daughter knows, but bringing it to life and doing it the physical comedy is next level. So no that I would say that that is an iconic image from the show of what you did there Eva mowing the lawn. There are so many just the imagery of the show. I think was it season two when they did the whole Eden thing with the apples and the or was that from them that's in the opening credits of this Well, I know, I know it's in the opening credits, but didn't somebody came in, like a big commercial director and they Oh.
00:15:09
Speaker
5: Yeah, David David Chappelle, David Chappelle, David David not La Chappelle, David Chappelle, David Chappellee.
00:15:22
Speaker 4: We're going with that.
00:15:23
Speaker 6: Yes, I was right.
00:15:25
Speaker 5: I think he did something like very high high fashion with apples. But so back to like, are there scenes that stand out like great?
00:15:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, there's okay. You know, I was certainly humiliated when I had to wear the song you know, a greet. Yeah, that was like something I didn't want to do. I'm like in my fortes, I'm like, Mark, nobody wants to see this, But that's still out there.
00:15:54
Speaker 4: That that lives on today.
00:15:57
Speaker 2: He gave you his one question word.
00:16:02
Speaker 3: When Curry Graham who's a fantastic actor, played my sort of my boss, and I was at the advertising in marketing or the advertising agency.
00:16:11
Speaker 4: There was a scene and.
00:16:12
Speaker 3: It got caught, but I had to go bobbing for a donut in the toilet bawl.
00:16:20
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
00:16:21
Speaker 3: And also he was throwing do you remember there was a scene in a in a boardroom where he's challenging me all the time and he was chucking eminem peanut eminem's at me and I would have to eat them out of the air.
00:16:36
Speaker 4: And we literally shot this. This wasn't c g.
00:16:38
Speaker 3: I I mean I was, you know, and I I don't want to really toot my own home.
00:16:43
Speaker 4: It was kind of I was kind of great at It was kind of a big deal.
00:16:48
Speaker 5: Everybody has to have like tricks in there in their basket of tricks. That's a good one to have.
00:16:53
Speaker 6: It really is.
00:16:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I of course I remember all of this stuff with with Flick in terms of but I think I was most nervous and I don't know how. I don't want to mess up your podcast with a spoiler alert. So if anybody, oh, that's okay.
00:17:09
Speaker 5: I think when we're we've got we're so happy to have guests on. We know we're going to go way out of order.
00:17:15
Speaker 3: That's all right, Okay, So way at the end of the series, when Tom and Lynnette get back together on the street, that was really uh, that was I wanted to make sure I didn't screw that up. And I will say, you know, after all of these years, I don't I have not gone back and watched the show, but I it pops up on YouTube, various scenes and stuff like that, and I'm I'm vulnerable watch you know, and and I'm I'm super proud of what I did.
00:17:43
Speaker 2: I'm like, should be yeah, you should be three fans here and a million of more fans out there listening.
00:17:50
Speaker 8: I'm sure.
00:17:51
Speaker 5: Well, I don't know, but yeah, yeah, I was curious, like just a little digging a little bit deeper into playing Tom, because you know, I think people sometimes don't know this with series that sometimes the actors don't know where it's going. So so you get a script and the most you have is what you've done before in another episode, and then what you're looking at now, and you're not necessarily privy to where it's going. And sometimes character things that they write for you to do, you think I wouldn't do that, like based on what happened before or I that's not the way I've been playing it, Like how do I do you?
00:18:39
Speaker 7: Did you feel?
00:18:41
Speaker 5: And Plus in this show there's so many characters that I think a lot of us were creating homework about our characters by ourselves because there just wasn't time to, you know, have rehearsal and talk about it and figure it out.
00:18:57
Speaker 7: So did you do that?
00:18:58
Speaker 5: Did you fill Tom with some of your own stuff for like anything's come to you?
00:19:06
Speaker 3: Well that I think it's it's a great question. But given my history and I don't know how you because Terry yours we've done this a while, I was not prepared to come on a show where where any writer was going to listen to what I had to say. I mean nobody, I mean I don't know why. In my experience up to that point, nobody, nobody else wanted to listen to me anyway. So I was busy doing my damnedest to take what they had written and make it somehow work for me. But on this point, this was the most generous group of writers that I have ever been around.
00:19:44
Speaker 4: They there was not.
00:19:47
Speaker 3: Uh, they did listen when and the only reason, the only reason I ever even would would pipe up is because Felicity did. And she would say, this just doesn't make sense. And I will say, to her credit, she was extraordinarily.
00:20:02
Speaker 4: Demanding of the truth.
00:20:03
Speaker 3: And she was demanding, like she didn't phone stuff in and she always come in on the set and you know, it's too neat in here. We've got all these kids. It'd just be a mess and throw cheerios around and stuff like this. But really, I mean stuff there wasn't even her job. And she'll acknowledge this now. So also one of my favorite things is when I would go to wear terry, I didn't I'm not a person that would show up in the makeup trailer in my normal civy clothes. I would always get in my wardrobe first and then go I just didn't want to I don't like makeup. I didn't want to get No, I always get I was getting a wardrobe, then I go to makeup. And so when we would come to rehearse, Uh, most people are in their city, their city clothes, they're hanging out doing something. Then we're rehearsing and you go get in your stuff, but I show I always showed up in my wardrobe and Felicia more than one occasion was look, Mika, are you gonna wear like what and just pull the rug out phone and you're like, well they put it in the trailer. She goes, oh my god, that's hideous, and.
00:21:10
Speaker 5: Back to why I used my Oh yeah, he keeps coming up.
00:21:13
Speaker 2: It just keeps coming up.
00:21:15
Speaker 3: Well they did, Oh my god the first season, Terry, you're right if now that you're making me recall, I mean, I literally most of my wardrobe is from
Target. This is before.
00:21:28
Speaker 4: The genius of.
00:21:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, I had some really there's some embarrassing cast photos of me, like like throwing a football on him, Like I look like the worst Sears of Robot model that like, yeah, they just couldn't.
00:21:44
Speaker 2: Another time in the last our last podcast that I pointed out that I'm wearing inexplicably, I'm wearing flip flops in a scene that it's just like why why am I not wearing sneakers? Like why am I out in the world, not at the beach, not nearpool, Like it's very strange. They certainly fliplop around like it couldn't have been good for sound, And we determined it. It must have just been the budget. Any other options for me?
00:22:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, it's I think you know, she's obviously an amazing actress. I don't know how you had you worked with her before. I hadn't either, And I have this memory, it's really one of my most clear on the pilot, and I remember it was I had. It was the deference that I had.
00:22:30
Speaker 7: It was it was I was just like, it's really.
00:22:33
Speaker 5: Nice to meet you, and I just want to make sure that you know whatever I do is supporting the choice that you want to make, because I know that you're a really accomplished, great actress, and I just want to make sure I'm setting you to be what you want to do.
00:22:56
Speaker 6: You know that she made me that way.
00:22:59
Speaker 3: She is a Yeah, she is a super strong presence. I think, Terry, when I felt that most was when I'm in a scene with Felicity and her husband, Bill Macy, from whom Macy comes to watch and he's behind the monitor.
00:23:17
Speaker 4: I'm like, no, go right now, you know no?
00:23:23
Speaker 3: And so yeah, but Bill, Bill, in his to his credit, he was always very gracious, a great liar.
00:23:31
Speaker 4: He's a great He's a great liar. He always he was very supportive of me.
00:23:35
Speaker 3: But yeah, one of the other things about Felicity that needs to be that is sort of interesting and why as we were talking before we got started with Emerson, why I'm glad you're no one's you know, you're not pursuing a career in acting. One of the things they did during the nego while I was in limbo and I said, no, I'm not going to do the show, or Mark was trying to negotiate for me, was they They certainly, and I don't know if they did this with you Terry to check in about Jamie or anything, but they went to they went to Felicity and said, you.
00:24:04
Speaker 4: Know, do you you like the savant guys? He is he okay with you? You know? And she was like, yeah, he's great. You know.
00:24:11
Speaker 3: She was just like, yes, I had And this is the tenuous you know, Cliff precipice that actors live on. Had Felicity said, I don't know, you know, or I didn't you know, she didn't like the way I smelled her, the way I kissed her that on that opening scene, you know, No, I mean any number of things it could have it could have spelled, could have taken away that opportunity from me.
00:24:36
Speaker 4: So I am, I.
00:24:37
Speaker 5: Don't remember having.
00:24:39
Speaker 6: Anywhere anybody else kind of powered.
00:24:41
Speaker 2: And she's like, if so Andrea would have never.
00:24:46
Speaker 6: I don't that's not true.
00:24:47
Speaker 5: If So Andrew would have been in every episode from the quire eight seasons, if I had had that kind of power.
00:24:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, Terry, I don't know that Felicity.
00:24:56
Speaker 3: They didn't come to her and say, you know, there wasn't nice to sit down, Hey, we want to discuss she they checked in, They checked in before before there before they're going to go another you know, another yard down the road with me. They were checking in and had she had she you know, any burn or saddle about me.
00:25:16
Speaker 4: I want to be here. I want to know when.
00:25:17
Speaker 5: Well, I'm glad that she didn't because, as Emerson said, I think you guys were just an iconic television married couple, so so truthful and complicated and willing to be ugly and and and and as you said, the show rode this incredibly truthful but also satirical comedic lines, just like walking a tightrope, and when it was at its best, you guys really just shined. So it's like such a joy to reflect on. And I want to Yeah, yeah, no, go ahead.
00:26:00
Speaker 3: In that you know clearly you yours and Jamie's dynamic was popping and everybody, you know, people wanted they were starving, and we had we couldn't allow them to have that relationship, right, That's why they had Andrew Jackson Nicholet. But then you had, you had Jamie, you had, you had a number of guys over the year.
00:26:21
Speaker 6: I'm probably I'm not forgotten.
00:26:23
Speaker 4: What's that that's gonna be ritual?
00:26:29
Speaker 5: Oh?
00:26:29
Speaker 4: God, of course.
00:26:31
Speaker 3: So in the ordination of things, I'm just gonna say Jamie's on a different level, right because he is a friend. I know if I come in here a bad mouth and it just looked bad. Uh So so who was who did you then next, like really spark with her? That you you you thought there was really some great you loved working with them?
00:26:53
Speaker 5: Oh this is really this is just difficult because I feel like it's a complicated answer. Plus we haven't gotten to those episodes yet, so that makes it hard. But I will admit something that I think it will be interesting to discover if my recollection it matches when we start watching it.
00:27:19
Speaker 7: But I used to feel that after we got.
00:27:26
Speaker 5: Through season one and a lot of people said this, that Susan became annoying and did some things that just seemed very out of character. And I talked to one of the writers years and years later, and he admitted to me that they really wrote themselves into a corner with Susan and Mike, because once you let a character find the love of their life, you have nothing to do but break them up and put them back together, and break
them up and put them back together, and break them up and put them back together. They never were willing to add Susan and Mike as another version of a married couple. So you had, you know, Brie and Rex and their particular struggle, and you had Tom and Lynette and their particular struggle, and Gabby and Carlos and their particular struggle. And they were never willing to let Susan and Mike get invested in a marriage and see what the problems were. And so they just started arbitrarily making up what he admitted to me were not particularly grounded or earned reasons to split them up and put them back together, and split them up and put them back together. So, to answer your question, there was a part of me that just always felt like why are we doing this storyline?
00:28:45
Speaker 8: Like?
00:28:47
Speaker 5: Why are we doing this storyline? And I think the audience felt that somewhat, And I, as you said, you're not you don't tell the writer what to do. I don't either, I, you know, would get it and certainly try to do the best with what I could manage out of what the story was there. But in regards to the loving relationship, yeah, and picking other boyfriends, I mean that's going to be an interesting thing as we start to watch these episodes, because I'm sure at like Gail is coming to mind. I'm sure like as and and of course Richard Bergie. You know, the heart wants what the heart wants. You can't not hear that, So it'll be interesting to see that. But yeah, that's kind of my reflection on where Susan's love life. You know, I never really got the opportunity that I think Tom and Yes, Susan.
00:29:48
Speaker 4: It's really well, really well said.
00:29:50
Speaker 8: I'm so rooting for Susan and Mike every time they're on screen together, and the chemistry is so real and obviously, you know, I grew up knowing James and is the best and you guys are so great together that I can imagine spoiler alert for me to see you not always stay together.
00:30:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a question for you. So something we've noticed is that, And one of the reasons why we were so excited to do this podcast is that we've had people, you know, coming up to us and letting us know that they're experiencing the show for the first time. There's a lot of people who are rewatching it and who are watching it for six seventh, eighth time, which is incredible, but there's also a huge amount of people out there who are watching it for the first time, and you know, they get really excited to come over and share that with you. So have you noticed that out in the world.
00:30:38
Speaker 3: I have, But even though I don't, I'm going to admit something I don't want to admit. There's seems to be a ground swell of like Tom Scavo haters.
00:30:51
Speaker 4: Terry.
00:30:51
Speaker 3: Is that So you just got through saying you know that you've got some audience reaction like, oh god, Susan is kind of either whatever, I forget what choice?
00:30:59
Speaker 4: Okay, that's Jesus.
00:31:01
Speaker 3: So you know, I was living in my own like you know, castle where I was like, you know, Tom's a great guy. Tom's a great guy, but no, there's there's a whole My children have let me know that there's a community of haters out there.
00:31:17
Speaker 4: And I was out at a.
00:31:20
Speaker 3: Press event for something and a kid came up to me and he said, uh, you're Tom's cobo And I said, well, not exactly, but yes and uh and.
00:31:31
Speaker 4: He said, would you do it this TikTok with me?
00:31:34
Speaker 3: I've got these followers And I go, sure, I don't know, I'm there for Presidente.
00:31:38
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh.
00:31:39
Speaker 3: So he holds up his camera and he starts going yeah. He starts going off on bat like I've got Tom Scobbo here.
00:31:46
Speaker 4: He did this?
00:31:47
Speaker 3: He was he and I was like what and he said and so we got to me and I just said what I thought Tom was handsome and charmie. I didn't know. So he sort of threw me under the bus, but I just rolled with. I mean, I don't nothing I could do about it. Literally, I know nothing about that. But within a day it had a million and a half people viewing it and shanning. So there seems to be some people out there who and I don't know if there's been a paradigm shift by the way with all this all of this masculinity that's out there now, all this toxic maxiculinity that's out there now, Like, is somehow Tom like because he was a little hapless and not particularly strongly directed that like, is he no longer is he not longer seen as a as a good character or I don't.
00:32:36
Speaker 5: Know, you know, I think we need to tee this up to Emerson.
00:32:39
Speaker 8: Yes, let me jump in and speak for the entire younger general person in their late twenties. I it's interesting hearing you say that, because I am watching it, and I, like I said, I actually really like Tom and Lynette, and I think maybe there's some hate around Lynette having given up her career to be a stay at home mom and then Tom being the character who sort of carries that career forward, even though it seems and again I'm watching it for the first time, but seems like maybe Lynette was better at the job, and so it's like, oh, well, why is this man, Like why are we ascribing to these traditional heteronormative ideas about the man's the one who goes and works when Tom maybe should be the one saying, hey, let me take a back seat because you're so good at your job. That would be my instinct in terms of the toxic masculinity. But I don't think. I don't want Tom to become toxically masculine.
00:33:47
Speaker 4: Yeah no, no, no, no, I don't. I didn't want him to be to be hond.
00:33:50
Speaker 3: I just didn't know if there's a new generation of guys like you, we don't do that work, take charge kind of guys and we you know, and then it made the character less attractive to some people.
00:34:00
Speaker 8: Or maybe and I'm I'm I'm afraid of them. I'm afraid if that's a new generation.
00:34:05
Speaker 2: But I think this is this kind of ties into you know what we're Another reason why we're so enjoying this experience is because we do we re examine the show now and see what kind of holds up or what what new interpretations have come from watching it now. And I didn't I was not aware that there's a Tom Anti Tom Sco movement.
00:34:25
Speaker 4: Out there, bastards.
00:34:28
Speaker 3: So I would like to ask the both of you, as the younger general and you're about to you're gonna have a have a baby.
00:34:35
Speaker 2: And I got to look up what generations?
00:34:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So I've got a dog, I've got I'm a grandparent, I've got two grandchildren, I've got brilliant Both of my adult daughters are professionals, very successful in their own right. But she's my daughter, is dealing you know, she's a mom now too, and so what would what is the argument that would have been made? I don't know, you know how, I thought the show did a very good job. And sorry for being all over the place with dealing with the fact that Felicity probably she was better at her job and she was a professional that she was struggling with, but that need to want the desire to also be a mom, but to have a career and trying to navigate that. And I thought the show did a My recollection is that they did a pretty good job.
00:35:21
Speaker 4: Is that not the case?
00:35:22
Speaker 3: And doesn't this conundrum still exist for this generation as you go forward? I don't know, because you know, the women are still having the babies, and that you know how it you know how we can navigate it differently, And what would you propose?
00:35:40
Speaker 8: Oh, that's such an interesting question. I mean, obviously, Andrea, you're the one about to have a child. I have said a few times watching you know, growing up from the time I was seven until I was sixteen with the show being on. Watching my mom go to work and be such a badass, professional working woman and a really present mom with me oh always kind of made me feel like, you know, I know, I want to be a mom myself one day, and I never really imagined a world in which that meant giving up my career. Although I did see you, mom when I was first born, take a moment in time between you know, Lois and Clark and and you did other things. You did cabaret, you did spy kids.
00:36:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was on Wolshre. Yeah I did. I was like, Wow, she singing and all that. That's the way to go.
00:36:37
Speaker 5: Thank you. That was crazy show, I mean, amazing experience. Feels like it happened to somebody else, you know. I just to So I was raised my mom, uh went back to work when I was six weeks old, and I was basically raised by a babysitter and had like not the greatest childhood in the world. So when it came time that I wanted to have a child your dad and I wanted to have a you, I made sure like I was like, I'm not working, you know, and I just built, like, we just made it so that our finances and
everything were in a place where I knew that I was gonna want to not go back to work because I had to, And that was based on how I was raised and I didn't want that experience.
00:37:23
Speaker 4: Lewis and Clark done.
00:37:24
Speaker 5: By that time, I got pregnant that yes, she did end it, she did. Emerson ended it. Yeah, I got pregnant and I had a like a high risk pregnancy that actually ended up going perfectly well, but in the anticipation of it, it was considered high risk. And they told the studio Warner Brothers that I have to be on bed rest probably by like August, and that was enough to make the studio cancel it because they just they didn't, you know, what were they going to do if Lois couldn't come to work for five mins, months or whatever. And so yeah, that was kind of the end of it. And then and then I took about almost two years off. I mean I think I did, like you said, little part here, a little part there that were a couple of weeks or whatever. But and then the first thing I really did was cabaret. But I was on the road and I was still breastfeeding, and you came with me to every city and it was I breastfed every day care.
00:38:23
Speaker 4: That wasn't just an LA show.
00:38:26
Speaker 5: No, I did seven months. I did LA Chicago, Boston and DC.
00:38:31
Speaker 6: God, yeah, bless amazing.
00:38:33
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was a lot. I one of the biggest regrets I have in my life because I don't have many and I don't really believe in it. But they did ask me to go to Broadway after seven months in DC and I passed because I was.
00:38:49
Speaker 4: Just burned done.
00:38:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's one of those things that I go, Okay, that maybe that was a mistake, Like I would love to have that Broadway bucket list item to check off, and I have not had that opportunity since. So anyways, enough about me.
00:39:08
Speaker 2: No, it's so interesting, and just to kind of wrap this this part up, I do think it's still an incredibly topical dynamic in relationships today, particularly heteronormative ones or you know, heterosexual relationships, that the mom to be is having to play mental gymnastics approaching motherhood, deciding what that means and how to do it all and do it all well. And I'm really enjoying rewatching Desperate Housewives and relating to these women and Lynette storyline that I, of course didn't relate to the first time around. At this point in my life about to be a mother and I'm learning from these characters and it's really it's really fun. Before we let you go, we would love to hear about what you are up to currently, what you are working.
00:39:52
Speaker 3: On, what you Oh, I did a little television movie on the Lifetime network or the Lifetime app or my life.
00:40:01
Speaker 5: I know all about you do. Yeah, yeah, you can watch you can watch your movies on demand on Lifetime.
00:40:08
Speaker 7: And so this is called the child Bride.
00:40:10
Speaker 3: This it is thank you Terry for seing. It is called the Child I was a child bride. It is the Courtney Stodden story. And I don't know you do Okay, Okay, I don't great. I'm gonna I'll try my best to make it tight in nine. In twenty eleven, actor Doug Hutchison, who had played the sadistic guard in the movie The Green Mile, married sixteen year old Courtney Stodden married a sixteen year old in Vegas with the blessing of her parents. Blessing maybe going too far, but they signed her away and they went on to have a very sort of exposed paparazzi marriage. She was a child, She was sixteen years old, and she looked a lot older, let's say, and she was sort of sexualized at a young age and were what I would think, forgive me, I'm going to just show my cards. I think inappropriate stuff for children of that age. But and she sort of the media ran with a story that and attributed adult values to this child and attacked her like that she was an adult who had had you know that her cerebral culture critics had been fully closed, and she was making all of these decisions with informed consent, and she wasn't she In the most tragic sort of act of parenting, these parents signed their daughter away to this guy, and they were married and had and then the relationship goes bad. So this is it's uh, it's kind of like if I don't know, if you remember the the Bob Fosse will go to Fosse again Bob Fosse movie Star eighty. There's elements of that in in in their relationship, but it was a highly toxic and dysfunctional and unhealthy relationship, and Courtney stopt into her credit now is fighting back, changing the narrative. We're seeing it from her side. There were other celebrities, you know, she was photographed all over and Doug Hutchison was sort of pimping her out at these to the paparazzi. They would go to different places. Whe're going to be here so she could be seen and shot with this specific product. That's how they were making money. Hollywood had turned his back, their backs on Doug. He was a pariah by this time, and.
00:42:50
Speaker 5: That must have been a really complicated, difficult role for you.
00:42:54
Speaker 3: Well, it was, It really was, because, as fate would have it, Doug Hutchison was someone that I had friends who had worked with. I knew of him. We had auditioned back in the day. I'm sure John and other actors of my age.
00:43:08
Speaker 4: No new dog.
00:43:09
Speaker 3: He was a very talent. I want to give him his props. He was a talented actor and a or. He had a terrible psychopathology that let him down a very dark road and he it's it's pedophilia, just there's no other way to say it. But the interesting things about playing him were changing myself physically. He's he's got dark hair, you know, we dyed the hair and cut into my head. We needed to receive my hairline because I have such a great hairline normally. But we we did all that, and then he spoke in a sort of a very specific way. He's you know, he talked only out on one side of his mouth, and he was like very sort of had a tone that's like, you know, like I never I would never, I would never hurt you, you know.
00:43:55
Speaker 4: Like I love you. It's very very soft and the boom.
00:43:59
Speaker 5: So that's so interesting, you know, I do find that Lifetime it gives you some compelling characters to explore us an actor.
00:44:08
Speaker 3: Well, I was, I was, I was all in. You know, he's a guy you can see online. You know, people the audience can go to YouTube on I can't just play like the television version of him, like they're gonna go, that's Tom Scavo, Like, you know, like that's so stupid. So I had to try and get as physically close to that character. And that's really why I became an actor to begin with. I was interested in transformation and then you know, here I am just like, you know.
00:44:33
Speaker 5: That's fantastic Lifetime app video on demand videos on it.
00:44:38
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm excited.
00:44:41
Speaker 7: It's so great to see you.
00:44:43
Speaker 4: It's great to see everybody.
00:44:46
Speaker 3: You guys look like a million bucks and and uh, you're doing the lord's work here keeping our show.
00:44:51
Speaker 5: You know, we get to see your son periodically, he pops in.
00:44:56
Speaker 4: You know, my guy, that's my guy.
00:44:58
Speaker 2: It's so great and it's like seeing and looks exactly.
00:45:05
Speaker 7: There's no doubt about that.
00:45:07
Speaker 3: I'm immensely proud of my son. So yeah, I'd take all that. I take the compliment.
00:45:11
Speaker 5: Thank you, well, thank you everyone for joining us for this fabulous bonus episode with deg savont I. We're so lucky, and uh, we're going to keep putting it out there because we are desperately devoted to you