Key Points
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Jesse Metcalfe weighed in on longtime rumors of drama on the Desperate Housewives set.
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The actor played John Rowland for 31 episodes between 2004 and 2009.
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“I wasn’t really aware of it,” Metcalfe told E! News of what went down behind-the-scenes.
Jesse Metcalfe “didn’t really experience a whole lot of drama” on the Desperate Housewives set, despite longtime rumors about what went down behind-the-scenes.
“That was probably because of my naivete and just kind of being swept up in my newfound success and fame,” the actor told E! News in an interview for their The Greatest Year in Pop Culturefeature on Oct. 5. “I didn’t really have the awareness to know what was going on around me, but apparently there was a lot of drama on the show.”
Metcalfe played John Rowland, the lover of Eva Longoria‘s Gabrielle Solis, on 31 episodes of the famed ABC series, from 2004 to 2009. The John Tucker Must Die star said that he felt like “a better person” when working with Longoria. “She has an incredible personality and she makes everyone feel important when they’re around her.”
Longoria starred on all eight seasons of the show alongside Teri Hatcher, Felicity Huffman, and Marcia Cross.
“Apparently there was some in-fighting between some of our leading ladies and also some drama between our creator and some of our leading ladies,” Metcalfe shared with E! Newson Monday. “I certainly wasn’t part of that. I wasn’t really aware of it. But I know that it happened.”
Metcalfe appeared to be referring to several instances cited over the years. In her 2023 memoir, TV writer Patty Lin alleged that Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry treated her with “overt racism” during the show’s first season. Years prior, Nicollette Sheridan (who played Edie Britt for the first five seasons), sued Cherry for assault and battery, gender violence, and wrongful termination. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed in 2013.
There were also the rumors of tension between the show’s stars, which Longoria attempted to deny during a 2023 interview on the Armchair Expert podcast.
“People ask me that a lot, like, ‘Were you guys really fighting?’ and I was like ‘God, I forgot that was a thing,'” she said at the time. “It was a thing. It was a big thing!”
Longoria noted that they were “working so hard” on Desperate Housewives that the cast “never could come up for air to really get outside of ourselves.” She added, “I remember that noise being outside of us. We were in such a bubble with our crew and each other. We could only talk to each other about, like, ‘Doesn’t this suck?'”
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For Metcalfe, however, his time on the drama series brought nothing but amazing memories.
“In television history, Desperate Housewives will go down as one of the greatest television shows ever made,” the actor said on Monday. “It’s something that I’m very proud of.”
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
