Marc Cherry's camp continued Friday to paint a picture of Nicollette Sheridan as a disruptive force on the Desperate Housewives set.
Executive producer George Perkins, who dropped a heck of a spoiler bomb on the stand yesterday, continued his testimony this morning—alas, he didn't have any more plot twists to offer.
What Perkins said was that, in his opinion, the incident that Sheridan is now suing Cherry over seemed "minor" at the time, based on his conversations with the actress.
"I know Nicollette is emotional at times," Perkins said. "I felt that emotion played a part...I felt that it was a misunderstanding between somebody trying to give a direction and the actor herself."
Perkins said that Sheridan told him soon afterward that Cherry had already apologized once, but that she wanted a second apology and flowers.
Sheridan claims that she confronted Cherry with a complaint about one of her character's scenes on Sept. 28, 2008, and he hit her upside the head, after which she cried, "You hit me!" and stormed off.
Cherry also remembers Sheridan storming off, but he says he only "tapped" her on the head to demonstrate the type of physical comedy he was looking for in her scene, and afterward he was confused by her reaction.
Perkins also reiterated Cherry's argument that cutting Sheridan out of Desperate Housewives during the fifth season was financially helpful to the show.
"We are at the point in time where we were an expensive show and we were trying to find ways to bring the budget down," Perkins recalled, noting that the first place they looked to trim the fat was the cast. Sheridan was making $175,000 an episode, he said, and would have been making $200,000 per in season six if she had still been around.
The producer also said that Sheridan arrived late to work roughly "50 percent of the time" every season, and that he had to speak to her and Cherry about her tardiness "multiple times."
"She would often tell me her call time was too early," Perkins said. Under cross-examination by Sheridan's attorney, Patrick Maloney, he admitted that other actresses were late to the set, too, sometimes.
SPOILER ALERT
Perkins shocked the courtroom—and Desperate Housewives fans everywhere, probably—when he testified yesterday that, rather than Sheridan's Edie, they also considered killing off Teri Hatcher's Susan. Obviously they decided on Edie, but when asked whether a character as major as Edie ever bit the dust, Perkins replied, "Mike Delfino."
And it turns out that James Denton is saying goodbye this week.
When asked if he had any more spoilers for the court today, Perkins replied, "I hope not. I was not happy to be the one [yesterday]."
After Perkins, Lynn Volk of ABC's human resources department testified that she found through the course of her investigation into the alleged altercation that Sheridan "was upset" but "an apology was issued and everything was fine." She said that she did not read the National Enquirer article that brought the incident to the attention of former ABC exec Mark Pedowitz.
Because there were "no further complaints" toward the end of 2008, Volk considered the incident closed, she said.
Former ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson then testified to being at the May 22, 2008, meeting where Cherry got the higher-ups' approval to kill off Edie Britt.
Jeff Greenstein, a writer and consulting producer on Desperate Housewives' third, fourth and fivth seasons testified that he first heard rumblings about Edie's possible demise sometime between "June, July or August" of that year.
There was "discussion" of killing her off, Greenstein said, but it was "not final."
Greenstein, though he didn't attend, also said that Edie's death didn't come up during the May writers retreat. Cherry's purported notes from that time include Edie's death in the story outline.
Sheridan claims Cherry formulated the plan after their fight in September.
(Originally published March 9, 2012, at 1:07 p.m. PT)