'Desperate Housewives' writer slams show, says staff avoided eye contact with Teri Hatcher
Patty Lin says creator Marc Cherry's 'wildly inefficient' leadership led to the writers putting out 'schlock'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}And Wisteria Lane thought it had drama.
A writer for the eight-season hit series "Desperate Housewives" is claiming that the writers weren’t encouraged to interact with the cast of the show, that she experienced "overt racism" from creator Marc Cherry and that his inefficient leadership led to them putting out "schlock."
"The writers weren’t barred from the set, but we weren’t exactly welcome," writer Patty Lin alleges in her memoir "End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood," which was released Tuesday. "Usually we’d only see the cast at table reads, where we’d sit quietly in the back and try not to make eye contact with Teri Hatcher."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Along with Hatcher, "Desperate Housewives" starred Felicity Huffman, Eva Longoria, Marcia Cross and Nicolette Sheridan. The show premiered in 2004 and ran until 2012, winning multiple Emmy Awards.
The cast of "Desperate Housewives" included Eva Longoria, Felicity Huffman, Teri Hatcher, Nicollette Sheridan and Marcia Cross. (Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
In a 2019 letter Cherry wrote in support of Huffman before she was sentenced for her role in the college admissions scandal, he claimed there was another unnamed actress on the show whom "everyone tried their darndest to get along with … over the course of the show. It was impossible," according to Page Six.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He added that while Huffman continued to be polite to the "big star," the actress was "determined to be rude." Cherry did not name the star.
In her book, Lin also claims that Cherry had a "wildly inefficient" process that involved giving her and some of the other staff "busy work" of writing "marginally funny material" while he hashed out the most important lines with his two favorites writers.
"We were putting out schlock. The fact that it became the hottest show on TV, won multiple awards, ran for eight years, and earned more revenue than God, still boggles my mind," Lin, who was let go during the first season, writes.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Patty Lin just published her memoir "End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood." (Zibby Media/Maxwell Booth)
She also writes that Cherry said that the staff should go behind another writer’s back to "gang bang" a script with rewrites after it was assigned to that writer.
Patty Lin accuses creator Marc Cherry, center, of "inefficient" leadership and "overt racism." (Mathew Imaging/FilmMagic)
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"With this wildly inefficient system, it’s a miracle that any episodes of ‘Desperate Housewives’ ever got made," she writes. "The quality that had attracted me to the pilot — the dark humor — was lost in the slapdash, assembly-line approach to what was supposed to be a creative process."
Lin also accuses Cherry of "overt racism," claiming that "one day at lunch, the topic of Margaret Cho came up, and someone mentioned ‘All-American Girl,’ Cho’s short-lived sitcom about a Korean American family. Marc turned to me and said, ‘Patty, you should write a show like that.’
"I love Margaret Cho, but please don’t lump us together just because we’re both Asian women in show business," she wrote.
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Lin also wrote for shows like "Friends," "Freaks and Geeks" and "Breaking Bad" before deciding to leave the business.
Fox News Digital has reached out to reps for Cherry and Hatcher for comment.