Marc Cherry reflects on the end of “Desperate Housewives” which will end its 8-year run in May

Yesterday at the TV Critics Association Winter Press Tour, ABC ended its day of presentations with a Q&A with the cast of Desperate Housewives and its creator Marc Cherry.

I don’t think we heard a word from Marcia Cross but Teri Hatcher shared a long anecdote about her nude season from the show’s second season. As Cross sat there saying nothing and looking slightly bored, I thought back to the infamous Vanity Fair shoot during season one when there was a big fight over who stood where and who wore what!

Ah, memories.

Anyway, the openly gay Cherry had some of the most reflective things to say during the session about the end of a show that revived his career and came along at a time in his life where he was at a real low point.

“People keep asking if it’s bittersweet. And it’s not. It’s completely sweet because I’m smart enough to know there’s no such thing as a job that goes on forever,” Cherry said. “All good things come to an end. And I was SO fucked. I was over $100,000 in debt to my mother. I was three years without an interview for a job. Even friends weren’t returning my calls. And then I wrote this script to show people I could still write… And all hell broke loose. Right from the start I could see it was going to be a roller coaster.”

“But I’m smart enough and, the way my mom brought me up, humane enough to go, ‘It’s all good. Even the bad stuff is good. Even those days when I’m exhausted.’ I’m like 50 pounds thinner than I was the first season because I was stuffing carbs constantly into my face because I was writing so much of that first season…And even when some other show comes along and it’s the hot new show I’m like, ‘Good for you!’ That’s how this industry works.”

“To everything there’s a season,” he concluded. “Our seasons are coming to an end. And I’m just so grateful for the ride we’ve had. So that’s how I feel is grateful as I enter the next chapter.”