Desperate Housewives Creator Has Considered Return With a 1966 Prequel

Desperate Housewives could return to our TV screens — but not in the way some fans are expecting.

When asked if there are talks about bringing the hit series back, creator Marc Cherry revealed a potential story line that would give viewers a new take on Wisteria Lane. on Wednesday, November 27, “I would probably want to do the idea maybe in an earlier decade,” Cherry, 62, told People on Wednesday, November 27. “Because the character I miss writing the most is actually Wisteria Lane.”

Cherry admitted he missed writing about the location most of all.

“That was the most fun playground anyone in the history of television has ever had, because we owned the whole street,” he explained. “I know that street like the back of my hand. When someone shoots a commercial on that street, I know it instantly, because I know all those houses, I know the geography. It was such a fun place to write for.”

The screenwriter specifically mentioned 1966 as a potential time period for a future series.

Desperate Housewives, which aired on ABC from 2004 to 2012, followed a group of women living in the fictional town of Fairview as they weathered a slew of personal issues over the span of 15 years. Teri Hatcher, Felicity Huffman, Marcia Cross, Eva Longoria and Nicollette Sheridan made up the main cast.

“I feel like if I ever got a chance to do that show again, I’d be better at the job. I learned so much,” Cherry added on Wednesday, before going on to reveal that thousands of people have asked him about a potential reboot. “The truth of the matter is that I have a couple of ideas to do it. There is still stuff that needs to be said.”

He added: “If you do a reboot, you have to have a really good artistic reason to do it. And at some point, I’ll sit down with someone and go, ‘OK, let’s talk about if there’s a good enough ‘why’ to do it.’”

While Desperate Housewives became a major hit, rumors of behind-the-scenes feuds between cast members cast a shadow on the show. Longoria, 49, opened up about her connection to her former costars while celebrating the show’s 20-year anniversary, telling the Daily Mail in June, “I talk to Felicity all the time. I talk to Marcia a lot. But the one probably I talk to most is Ricardo [Chavira], my [onscreen] husband. And Jesse [Metcalfe].”

Speculation regarding potentially damaging offscreen dynamics started in 2012, when it was reported that Longoria, Huffman, 61, Cross, 62, and Vanessa Williams gave farewell gifts to the show’s crew without Hatcher’s involvement.

“I will never disclose the true and complicated journey of us all, but I wish everyone on this show well,” Hatcher, 59, wrote via email to TV Guide at the time. “Marc created out of thin air a majestic street called Wisteria Lane with its picket fences, its flowers always in bloom … and four really complimentary characters: a selfish girl, a harried woman, a repressed control freak and a soul-searching, well-meaning fumbler. Those four characters and the actresses who played them seemed to meld together in a way that harkens the phrase ‘once in a lifetime.’”

Longoria has since questioned the narrative, sharing on the “Armchair Expert” podcast in November 2023, “I remember even back then it was a narrative about women. Because there were all these shows with men on the air, and nobody was like, ‘They’re fighting!’”

The actress expressed gratitude to her costars.

“They all had such a better handle on fame, on that narrative. I’m like, ‘[People] are saying we’re fighting.’ They’re like, ‘Well, that’s just a narrative they do on women because we’re over 40 on a television show.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ I wasn’t even that smart to understand that,” Longoria continued. “Anything that happened outside the show, we were like, ‘What?’ We could never come up for air to really get outside of ourselves. We were only on the set. … I remember that noise being outside of us. We were in such a bubble with our crew and each other.”