The man behind the Housewives: how out creator Marc Cherry's insight into Desperate living led to one of TV's biggest hits

Television shows revolving around four women have been a staple of Marc Cherry's career. He was Dixie Carter's personal assistant on Designing Women; he wrote for The Golden Girls during the final two seasons of that classic comedy; and he was executive producer on the 1994-1995 sitcom The Five Mrs. Buchanans, which was about a quartet of wives and one fearsome mother-in-law. All that pales next to his current success as creator and executive producer of ABC's Sunday night phenomenon Desperate Housewives. "There's something about a group of women doing insane things that appeals to me," he notes, laughing. "I am fascinated by them."

The openly gay Cherry says he connects with female characters more than with male. "I had a close relationship with my mother and my two sisters, and I have a lot of female friends," he says. "I like and understand women. I don't know if it's a gay thing or not."

Eva Longoria, who plays the frustrated Gabrielle Solis on Housewives, thinks it is. "Absolutely," she says. "He has a feminine quality that comes through in the writing that just wouldn't come through with a straight miter. He really hit the nail on the head when he wrote these women, because even though the situations are heightened, women can relate to them. When we went on Oprah, every single woman in the audience said that they had been through similar situations; they had been that miserable."

It's not the first time that a show created by a gay man has hit a nerve in mainstream culture--and about 40% of the Desperate Housewives audience is male, indicating that it's not just a femme favorite. "I wanted to combine the tonalities of Sex and the City and Six Feet Under," says Cherry, "but also wanted to return to the roots of TV soap opera, which is ordinary people and their problems. It's Peyton Place with a kind of hip tonality."

So why are gay men so good at these cutting-edge shows? "You have to be smarter when you write for gay people, and I say that because I'm writing for myself," he says. "Also, when you grow up gay, you're outside the mainstream and have a different take on the world. That's why gay artists have had such a powerful influence on popular culture--because they are willing to go to different places and face brave new worlds."

Despite its fervent queer following, Chert3, says, there were virtually no gay men on the writing staff of The Golden Girls. "There was [James] Berg and [Stall] Zimmerman on season 2, and then [writing partner] Jamie [Wooten] and I came in on season 5," he recalls. "I remember our first day at lunch with all the writers, and they started to talk about their favorite boxing matches ever. It was so macho, and we were expecting a gay old time. I think actually that's why it worked. The women's attitudes were so hard-edged because these straight macho guys were writing their lines, and then the lines were coming out of Bea Arthur's mouth. It came out gay."

Arthur herself has nothing but compliments for Cherry, who she says was "an important part of The Golden Girls." "The scripts he and Janie wrote were unusual and delicious," she says. "I remember one of the shows that they wrote, Blanche took me to a nightclub called the Rusty Anchor, and she ends up singing and sitting on a guy's knee. She says, 'Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?' He pulls out a gun."

Ten years after The Golden Girls, Cherty tackled gay characters on the short-lived CBS sitcom Some of My Best Friends, a spin-off of the movie Kiss Me, Guido. But he remains mysterious about any future gay story lines or characters on Desperate Housewives. "Maybe we'll have a gay character," he hints with an enigmatic smile. "Maybe one's already there."

Goodridge is U.S. editor of Screen international.

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