lawsuits

The Desperate Housewives Trial Is Better Than an Episode of Desperate Housewives

Nicollette Sheridan arrives in court
Photo: Toby Canham/Getty Images

As we mentioned the other day, Nicollette Sheridan’s wrongful termination suit against ABC and Desperate Housewives’ creator Marc Cherry is currently in trial. A short recap of the events that brought this brouhaha to a real court of law: Sheridan claims that Cherry hit her on set in September of 2008 (a fact that Cherry doesn’t deny), and that Sheridan was then fired from the show after she complained about being hit, thus denying her millions in wages and revenue. (Her character Edie Britt was killed off at this time.) Cherry and ABC contend that Sheridan’s firing was a creative decision and had nothing to do with the incident, for which Cherry apologized. As you can probably tell from this brief description, whatever actually happened, Marc Cherry and Nicollette Sheridan don’t much get along and have fairly dramatic personalities. If you doubt this, well, please, take a look at what has happened in court so far.

Here are some things that happened today. In a courtroom.

  • “The day concluded with the showing of a seven-minute video that was a montage of every character who was killed off during the run of the [Desperate Housewives], which was about 43 different actors.” [THR]
  • “[Cherry’s Lawyer Adam] Levin, who often looked at the jury instead of Sheridan, was criticized by the actress at one point. ‘You keep looking at the jury,’  she said. ‘I feel like you are asking them the question.’ After that Levin did look more directly at her.” [THR]
  • In his opening statement, Sheridan’s lawyer described the scene in which Edie died — “she escapes being strangled by her husband, gets into a car wreck when she hits a tree, and survives that, only to step into a puddle and be electrocuted” — as a “triple homicide.” [Daily Beast]
  • Being questioned about whether she was “slapped” or “violently hit,” Sheridan snapped at the lawyer “I don’t know why they’re different! … You are such a stickler for details!” [E!]
  • “Sheridan then started doing breathing exercises on the stand to calm down.” [WriterChica/Twitter]
  •  Apparently when Cherry apologized to Sheridan immediately after the slap, he then went to her trailer and said, “I’m on bended knee begging your forgiveness,” hugged her, and then told her he liked her new trailer design. [Daily Beast]
  • After thinking about this apology and talking to some friends, Sheridan decided, “I had been hit — unacceptable behavior by my boss … I thought he could at least apologize again and send some flowers.” ABC and Cherry declined to do so. [Daily Beast]
  • Cherry apparently was also “prone to picking Eva [Longoria] up in the air and moving her to show her where he wanted her to stand in a scene.” [WriterChica/Twitter]

If that is not enough, please go read the Daily Beast’s MariaElena Fernandez’s entire Twitter feed from today: There is meditating involved. And, remember, Eva Longoria, Felicity Huffman, Marcia Cross, and Cherry are also all expected to testify! So this is only going to get better!

The Desperate Housewives Trial Is Better Than an Episode of Desperate Housewives