The showrunner reveals what he’s learned from the Desperate Housewives drama, his advice for the Pretty Little Liars , why he’s not upset that ABC passed on Devious Maids , and much, much more.
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It's been 26 years since Marc Cherry started working in network television as an assistant to Dixie Carter on Designing Women. And in more than the quarter-century that's followed, he wrote for The Golden Girls, created Desperate Housewives, and these days, he's finishing up the second season of Devious Maids, his Lifetime series about Beverly Hills housekeepers who have just as many skeletons in their closets as their bosses do.
"I went a whole year without the slightest bit of tension, and it was so lovely, I can't even begin to tell you," Cherry said of working with Devious actresses Susan Lucci, Roselyn Sanchez, Ana Ortiz, Dania Ramirez, Grant Show, Judy Reyes, and Rebecca Wisocky.
But it hasn't always been so easy. The Desperate Housewives cast — Teri Hatcher, Eva Longoria, Marcia Cross, Felicity Huffman, and Nicollette Sheridan — found themselves the subjects of countless tabloid stories — and one dismissed lawsuit — over the show's eight-year run throughout the early '00s.
"I learned a lot from Desperate Housewives, both good and bad," Cherry said. "I am thankful for the experience, but let me tell you: It was its own kind of boot camp. I made some mistakes. Sometimes, I guessed right; other times, I guessed wrong. But I grew a lot as a human being and as a showrunner."
Below, Cherry shares 11 of the biggest lessons learned throughout his Golden, Desperate, and Devious years in Hollywood.
There is always a silver lining.
"I was an unemployed 42-year-old writer with an agent who embezzled from me and I had to send her to jail," Cherry said of the lean years before Desperate Housewives. "Plus, I was going broke at the time, so it was a double whammy. It was devastating, but because of that, I had to get new agents ... [and] they were the ones who figured out how to sell this script about housewives I'd written. That changed my whole life, whereas my old agent had the same script, but couldn't figure out how to sell it. My whole life turned on the fact this agent stole from me."
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Learn from your mistakes.
"First of all, the overwhelming majority of the cast of Desperate Housewives was lovely," Cherry explained. "The truth is, you just really learn to pay attention to the energy the person gives off in the [audition] room. It's not a guarantee of what the actor's behavior will be like over the run of a long show, but if you're going to live with anyone for eight years, you'll see them at their best, their worst, and their most exhausted. I give people a lot of leeway.
"When I started Desperate, I was kinda looking at the women going, I'm not sure if I know what I'm doing, but let's keep our fingers crossed. What's cool now is I've made my mistakes. Not to say I won't make more in the future, but I've been through so much that when situations come up, I actually know the best way to handle them better."
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