'Housewives' spats fan stereotypical flames
Even before recently watching my first episode of ABC's ''Desperate Housewives," I already knew two things about the Sunday night series. It's this television season's biggest new hit, and its stars hate one another.
And lately, there's been far less chatter about the series' runaway ratings than on-set, behind-the-scenes rancor. According to numerous reports, the show has been plagued by clashing egos and surly attitudes among its five stars -- Teri Hatcher, Felicity Huffman, Marcia Cross, Eva Longoria, and Nicollette Sheridan.
This only seems to be newsworthy when it involves shows with mostly female cast members.
The chatter reached its zenith (or nadir, depending on your perspective) in the current issue of Vanity Fair, featuring a cover story that has as much to say about the cast's internecine warfare as the show's breakout success or how it has helped lift ABC from the Nielsen doldrums.
With a cover blurb describing the bathing-suit-clad women as ''Five Uneasy Pieces," writer Ned Zeman contends what should have been a ''lighthearted photo shoot" with famed photographer Mark Seliger descended into a ''five-star drama, complete with profanity, tears, and tantrums." Zeman then goes on (and on and on) to detail the ''soap opera within a soap opera that satirizes soap operas," complete with screaming matches, icy smiles, weepy cellphone conversations, and enough F-bombs for an episode of HBO's ''Deadwood."
It's hardly surprising to hear the sudden stars of an unexpected hit show aren't exactly best friends. I've always imagined that being on a TV show is akin to being in a popular band or group. Whether actors or musicians, they're probably bound more by ambition, opportunity, and commerce than by camaraderie. And once one of them emerges as the biggest star -- a version of many musical groups' Lead Singer Syndrome -- there's the inevitable fallout filled with acrimony, hurt feelings, and terse publicists.
Still, when this common condition afflicts TV shows, we're most likely to hear about it only when it involves predominantly female casts, reinforcing stubborn images of women as ferocious harpies who enjoy nothing more than clawing one another's eyes out.
It was the same thing throughout HBO's saucy comedy ''Sex and the City," as there always seemed to be some breathless dispatch about incessant bickering, especially between stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall.
Certainly, Parker received the lion's share of ink, which had to rankle her costars, and the situation is probably similar with the cast of ''Desperate Housewives." Hatcher and Longoria have garnered the most solo magazine covers, and Sheridan has been popping up in ads, most famously a suggestive ''Monday Night Football" promo with Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens. So far, Cross and Huffman (the best actress of the lot, by the way) haven't received as much attention.
In Vanity Fair, Huffman expresses concerns about the inevitable backlash to the show's triumph, but she could just as well have been discussing how the media treats successful women.
''We [our society] like to build something up then tear it down," she says. ''Particularly women. Particularly actresses. Remember Daryl Hannah? Remember Geena Davis? They just built them up to iconic stature and then ripped them down. So I guess it's coming."
So far, none of this has hurt the show, which remains comfortably ensconced in the upper reaches of the weekly TV ratings. Yet it does overshadow a show that is funny and well written, and has been bold enough to feature a cast in which four out of five of its female stars are closer to menopause than puberty and are presented as intelligent, sexual beings, who, like the ''Sex and the City" gals, are more friends than rivals.
It's entirely possible that the ''Desperate Housewives" actresses aren't especially fond of one another. Still, if there are similar problems among cast members on CBS's various ''CSI" programs or NBC's ''Scrubs," you'd never know it. If long, wearying photo shoots begin to unravel for the casts of FX's ''The Shield" or ''Lost," ABC's other freshman hit, it probably won't be trumpeted from the newsstands or by any of those innumerable entertainment shows. After so many decades, women are still regarded as shrill caricatures and stereotypes. Those feeding the celebrity gossip mill continue to behave as if only groups of actresses are caustic and catty, forgetting this is less some inherent trait of womanhood than the petulant nature of Hollywood itself.
Renée Graham's Life in the Pop Lane column appears on Tuesdays. She can be reached at graham@globe.com
