ABCDesperate Housewives could have broken some major new ground back in 2005 after the show's Felicity Huffman played a transgender woman in the film Transamerica.
"After I shot Transamerica I kept going to Desperate and saying, 'We need a trans character. We need a trans character,'" Huffman told me yesterday while promoting her new film Rudderless at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. "There are wonderful trans actors that I know, but I think it was too early. I really wanted it to happen."
Sadly, it never did.
Desperate Housewives premiered 10 years ago. While it ran for eight seasons, Huffman doesn't think a reunion show will be happening anytime soon. "I think it would be so horrifying a reunion with all of us—except for f--king Eva Longoria who doesn't seem to age—tottering around. It would be terrible—Desperate Old Fogies!"
Rudderless (in theaters and on VOD on Oct. 17) marks the directorial debut of Huffman's husband William H. Macy. It centers on a dad (Billy Crudup) who finds recordings of his son's music after he dies in a school shooting.
"It's not a movie about a school shooting," Huffman says. "It's about the aftermath and hope and redemption and music."
Huffman said she jokingly threatened to bail on the film after finding out she'd be playing Crudup's ex-wife. "I was cast and it was supposed to be a couple of older actors and then Billy Crudup signed on and I said, 'Well, you gotta get rid of me,'" Huffman said. "I said, 'You've got to light me really well' and my husband said, 'Yes, we're totally going to light you the right way.' That's pretty much people standing there with flashlights. They had $2."
(FYI: Huffman is definitely not so "older" than Crudup. At 46, Crudup is only five years younger than Huffman.)
Huffman returns to series television in the upcoming American Crime, a drama from 12 Years a Slave writer John Ridley.
"I love a TV family," she said. "I feel like the family that's created on a TV show is like a theater family."