Interview with "Desperate Housewives"' Tuc Watkins

AE: Do you guys get involved in the neighborhood more than just the issue with fountain? For example, do you become involved in the mystery that surrounds Katherine or is your story line pretty discrete at this point?
TW: One of the great things about it is they bring us on and we’re not just the gay guys that live in one of the houses. We get really woven into the storyline of the street pretty quickly. Dana Delany’s character is really the catalyst who tries to make us get rid of the fountain that we put in our front yard. So when she comes over and says, “Okay, you gotta get rid of the fountain,” we say, “Well, you know what, we think we gonna keep the fountain and if we keep the fountain we promise not to tell everyone what your secret is.” And so we are fairly well armed.

AE: Is that all in the first episode?
TW: No, that comes out a little bit later. So she picks the wrong two guys to mess with.

AE: I’m glad to hear that. I was a little worried that you guys would show up and make a couple of appearances and then disappear.
TW: It is good, and you know in the first episode we first get introduced through Teri Hatcher’s character, and she makes an attempt to befriend us, but she keeps putting her foot in her mouth the way her character Susan does. So there are some sort of clichéd maybe gay jokes there, but they quickly get turned on their ear the more that you get to see us.

So I think that Marc as a creator should be applauded for bringing on a gay couple, and it’s not issue-oriented. So many times when we first meet what would be considered "minority" couples, in the past on television, we get introduced to them through their issues. With gay people it’s about coming out or it’s about health issues like HIV and AIDS, and there was a time for that and that’s how audiences get to know couples like that, but we don’t need that anymore.

We’ve got a sort of landmark situation here where we’re a gay couple. We’re there. We don’t explain why we’re there or what gay means or anything like that. We’re just another family that lives on the street.

AE: It's not either of your characters that are killed when the tornado hits Wisteria Lane is it?
TW: We had the Applewhite house retrofitted with high-quality storm windows. It looks good that we should weather any heavy winds that may come our way.

AE: Where do you live yourself? City or suburbs?
TW: My home base is in Los Angeles. I live on a street that has lots of grass and trees, but it’s nothing like Wisteria Lane.

AE: You’re obviously a very handsome man and you’ve caused a number of our readers to swoon so I have to ask, do you already have a desperate househusband or housewife of your own?
TW: I’m terribly flattered that I’m making people swoon. I haven’t heard that term in a long time, but you know if gay guys can identify with my character, then I think I’m doing my job right. And if straight people think I’m doing a believable job, then I’ve done my job.

As an actor, I think that we all . . . actors sort of hide behind characters that we play. I think we know a little bit too much about actors and in the advent of entertainment television programs and periodicals and things like that, actors become celebrities. But our job is sort of to be a cipher, so I sort of hide behind the characters that I play.

AE: Which of the Desperate Housewives' actresses have you worked with the most so far?
TW: I’d say we’ve kind of run into all the women on the street almost equally. The first episode that we do is mostly with Teri. And subsequent to that, we take on the whole neighborhood association. Then we have a Halloween party, and a lot of the neighborhood comes to our Halloween party so we’re pretty well woven into the whole neighborhood.

AE: What’s it been like moving onto such an iconic show with such an iconic address? Has it been intimidating or just an exciting opportunity?
TW: Well, the most exciting thing to me when I first signed up was I found out we were moving into the old Munsters’ House. That’s what the Applewhite house is, the one that we moved into.

It’s been very exciting to go into a show that’s already such a big hit, and they’re in their fourth season now. And since they have such a tight knit, well accomplished core of main players, they can bring on someone who’s as strong as Dana Delany and Nathan Fillion and myself and Kevin in the fourth season to inject a bit of new blood, so it’s great to be part of a show that’s already going so strong. We just hope to flesh it out with some new color.

AE: Nathan and Dana are amazingly good looking people. I hadn’t seen Dana in years and when I saw her at the Television Critics Association (TCA) conference she was absolutely stunning looking.
TW: She’s downright hot and she’s done an amazing job of creating a character that can fit into a show that already has such strong women on it and do that in such a unique way and still find a niche that needs to be filled in what would ordinarily seem to be an already full canvas. She’s done an amazing job.

AE: You have played gay several times before. I’ve been told some actors still hesitate to take gay roles. Is that ever a consideration for you?
TW: I don’t think so. We’re not living in the 50s or even the 80s anymore and there are more and more minority type characters and gay characters that are just great, interesting characters to play. I think that’s really what an actor looks for. I’ve played a lot of gay characters. I’ve played a lot of straight characters. Playing a gay character is very similar to playing a straight character. You just employ a better sense of humor, style and class, so I don’t think anyone has that trepidation about playing roles like that anymore.