James Denton on a 'Desperate Housewives' Reboot — And How He Really Feels About Working With Teri Hatcher on 'Fantasy Island'
Do Mike and Susan finally get a happy ending?
As Mike and Susan in Desperate Housewives, James Denton and Teri Hatcher were a favorite TV couple, and now they are delighting their fans by reuniting with the same chemistry for Season 2 of FOX’s Fantasy Island.
Denton and Hatcher play empty nesters Dolly (Hatcher) and Dutch (Denton) who seek clarity on how to spend their next chapter. The episode airs on Monday, Jan. 16.
“[Teri and I just started to trust each other and I have a lot of respect for her. We help each other out in scenes,” Denton exclusively tells Parade.com. “I can think of a handful of scenes where I’d be struggling and get mad at myself and [Teri] is able to whisper the right thing in my ear, and be able to unlock something as an actor.”
Read on for James Denton’s take on he and Teri Hatcher have such great chemistry and whether he's game for a Desperate Housewives reboot.
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What was it about this particular Fantasy Island script that made you want to say yes?
I was a fan of the original show because I’m a child of the ‘70s, so that interested me. Then it’s just a really fun, kind of dark script. The main thing was working with Teri. I will walk over hot coals to work with Teri Hatcher. This is the fourth time we’ve been married on TV, so it was a combination of things. I don’t know if I would have been as anxious to do it if it weren’t [involving] Teri and me.
What is the magic between the two of you? You’ve obviously got great chemistry. Where does that come from?
I think mutual respect. I don’t want to speak for Teri, but we talked about this a lot. When you hire us, you get almost 20 years of chemistry and background that you can’t buy with actors you just put together for the first time. It was fun to be able to just fall right back into that with her.
Also, when you start out one of your first weeks together, she’s naked in the bushes and I have to take care of her on set, keep her covered up and you have to have a little chivalry in this business on those days. I think we were able to bond through that experience because it was so crazy. We try to do that for each other because we know each other so well. It’s a combination of all of that stuff.
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Laura Magruder/FOX
What’s the craziest or funniest thing that ever happened to you and Teri while working together on any project?
Oh, wow! Well, that [Desperate Housewives] episode which is sort of famous where she gets locked out of the house naked. The crew tries to not stare at her and she’s got some tape in places, but that was the craziest day. We had a few where she was in lingerie and crazy things like the vacuum cleaner pulling it off of her. It sounds like it’s always about Teri being naked, but that’s what the show was.
The Hallmark movie was pretty tame. This [Fantasy Island] episode has the craziest thing Teri and I have ever done together by miles. If anybody’s curious, the scene with Andy Richter, where he sort of shows up, and we’re so lucky to get him in this episode, he’s a game show host in sort of our fantasy world. That situation to shoot it, I won’t even say what it involves but you’ve got to see it. It’s a scary, crazy, fun day of shooting in the jungle.
I got a little claustrophobic watching that.
Yes, shooting it I think Teri got a little claustrophobic, too.
Do you keep in touch with anyone else from Desperate Housewives?
I do. Doug Savant and I did an episode of NCIS: New Orleans a couple of years ago just for fun. And Ricardo Antonio and I. The guys sort of bonded during the show waiting to see which one of us was going to get killed first, so we’re all pretty close. I stay in touch with Eva Longoria, we’re sort of aligned politically and so I’ll see her on TV and at events and I’ll check in with her. Of course, Teri. Then Kyle MacLachlan is one of the nicest people in showbiz. He is a real gentleman. He runs a winery in Seattle and I buy wine from him during the holidays. So, yes, most of the guys.
Nice folks, these guys really are. I didn’t know the women as well. Obviously, I worked almost primarily with Teri. I think I only had maybe three or four scenes with Eva in eight years. It was when I came to fix their plumbing one time, we realized it was the first scene we had had together, other than these giant weddings and funerals where we happened to be in the same building, and we actually spoke on camera. It was only a handful of times for Eva and Marcia. I just knew the guys so much better. We tended to stay more in touch.
How would you feel about a Desperate Housewives reboot?
I think it’s a great idea. Although [my character is] dead so it would have to be flashbacks. When they decided to kill me off, [show creator] Marc Cherry called me in and said, “We want to do something big with about five episodes to go and we can’t kill any of the women, so we’re thinking about killing [Mike] Delfino.”
It was really polite of him to run it by me. I’m sure they would have done it anyway, but I was thrilled because I got a big send-off, then I got an episode that was my funeral, and one that I came back as a ghost. I had all the shows produced so I got paid anyway. I got to go out with a bang, literally, and Doug and Ricardo and those guys had to kind of fade away. I was happy then. But now if there’s a reboot, I think I’m going to be on the outside looking in.
Laura Magruder/FOX
If Fantasy Island was real, what would you personally wish for?
Wow, that’s tough. The show’s got a little bit of darkness to it. In this episode, Teri and I are empty nesters, which is exactly where I am in life. My daughter’s graduating from high school, my son’s a sophomore in college. So, it was right in my wheelhouse, which was another reason it attracted me. Their fantasy is to find out if they should stay together or what they should do with their lives and what the rest of their life is going to be like. Of course, it’s a fantastical way that Roselyn Sanchez’s character handles it. That kind of makes sense to me in trying to figure out your life after being a parent. Obviously, you’re a parent in a different iteration, but it’s very different having adult kids.
I don’t know, it will probably be something very practical. I’m a pretty practical guy, so I’m not really sure what that would be. People have fantasies of being professional athletes and professional musicians. I’m a very frustrated musician. So, if I were able to fulfill a fantasy, I would probably be playing in a rock band.
This Fantasy Island episode is, in a nutshell, about a do-over and some second chances for this couple and their marriage.
It is sort of. It’s a little bit of that; a second chance. They come in not really knowing. They’re very funny, they get right off of the plane they’re sort of the Bickersons. Teri and I were laughing about they were at each other’s throats; sort of that familiarity has bred contempt over the years and they just really want out. But they didn’t want to admit it so they want to fantasize about having a romantic life after kids but they’re not very optimistic. And so, Roselyn puts them through the paces as far as figuring out why they love each other, what they don’t like about each other and how little they really know, and how things we assume about our partners and we don’t bother to talk about.
The big lesson in this that I think anybody can relate to, is that we find out the things they never actually said out loud. That’s been the death of their relationship. I won’t let you know how it ends but it’s interesting to watch them learn those things after being together for over 20 years. All the stuff that goes unsaid in relationships. I think it’s unfortunately pretty common.
Do you have plans to work with your son again? I know you did a Hallmark movie a few years ago.
We did one when he was younger and we just did another one, Perfect Harmony. He’s fantastic in it. He plays my son in this one, he did in the other one, For Love & Honor, which is great. He’s not really an actor, but he’s super talented and it was really fun and heartwarming and the best month of my life. He doesn’t want to be an actor; he doesn’t think it’s very practical and he’s probably right about that. He’s a psychology major. We hope to do another one together.
And I’ve got to get my daughter in there, too, or I’m going to really be in the dog house. I’m doing two or three more movies next year for Hallmark and hopefully, we’ll work my daughter in, who’s also a really talented actress. Neither one of them do it or want to do it as a vocation, but they’re both very good at it. Their mom [Erin O’Brien Denton] is a fantastic actress.
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Laura Magruder/FOX
Based on what I know of your career, you’ve played a lot of pretty good guys. Do you ever get tired of that and do you have a fantasy of playing a bad guy?
That’s funny. When I first started, it was all bad guys and it was usually the Jimmy Stewart kind of guy that you didn’t expect to be a bad guy who then turned. That’s a very popular character paradigm. On the show called The Pretender I was a real bad guy called Mr. Lyle for three of the four seasons on The Pretender. And then a few guest stars, I would be the unlikely bad guy. Then when Marc Cherry convinced America that Teri Hatcher would date me, I suddenly became hunky out of nowhere. I had never been cast that way so I owe Teri for that. Yes, I would love to do something darker.
Also, I’m getting kind of long in the tooth to be a romantic lead, so I would like to get some of that pressure off of me and do something more character driven. I’m a character actor at heart. I think everybody would rather play bad guys.
You have had many amazing leading ladies, including Catherine Bell in The Good Witch and of course, Teri Hatcher. To what do you attribute this good fortune?
I don’t know, clean living? I got really lucky. Even on Housewives, because I was with Dana Delany for a season, who I love, and briefly with Nicolette Sheridan. And Kim Delaney and I were a couple on Philly, a Steve Bochco show for a full season. So, yes, no chopped liver in there. I played Reba’s love interest on Reba a recurring role and had a fantastic time with Reba McEntire. I just kind of got lucky. It all started with Housewives and then kind of one after the other.
Catherine Bell is really special in that she’s been a lead on three series, either number one or two on three series that lasted seven years or more. I don’t know any other actress that’s done that; it’s really unique. People love her, and for good reason, she’s really great. We had a great time on The Good Witch. There were really nice people. I loved being in Canada. It was a very fun series. We got seven years out of it and I really miss it. I think it’s streaming on Netflix, and it’s pretty fun to watch.
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Teri says that reuniting with you onscreen gives some closure to Desperate Housewives fans. Do you agree?
I think that’s really smart. Teri is so in touch with her fans, even the ones from Lois and Clark. For example, some characters on Housewives wanted to do something really wildly different with their hair and their look, and Teri said, "The audience likes the character, they don't want you to change, they like you the way they like you, they know you and you have to protect your character." Teri’s really smart like that.
So, people do get a kick out of that. She said that was one reason she wanted to do both this and the Hallmark movie, was to give people the chance because it was so heartbreaking. Susan was the main character on that show if we’re honest about it, and she didn’t get the happy ending.
To see us together again, a lot of people said they still sort of project Mike and Susan. For any Desperate Housewives viewers, Fantasy Island is very interesting to see, it’s basically Mike and Susan if they’ve grown older together, 10 or 15 years later and now what do we do with our lives now that the kids are gone? So, I do believe Teri’s right about that. I’ve had a number of fans saying that it’s fun to see us together again because we really were sort of robbed of any kind of a wind-up or any kind of an ending on Housewives.
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How do you and Teri spend your time when you’re not on camera during Fantasy Island?
Oh my gosh, in Puerto Rico? We shot in Puerto Rico, which was a bonus. I live in Minnesota now, so that was another part of the attraction was shooting in Puerto Rico in March. We had a ball. We took a boat out and went snorkeling with Andy Richter and had a blast. And did a lot of eating and drinking. Puerto Rico’s an underrated film location. We had a great time.
And the same thing, even in the other movie we were in Winnipeg, sort of the opposite of Puerto Rico, but we always have a good time together. It usually involves eating and drinking.
Are you thinking that your Hallmark or Desperate Housewives fans are all going to come and watch this Fantasy Island episode? Especially because it’s not only you, it’s you and Teri Hatcher.
Oh, yes. Oh, I hope so and I’m sure Fox is, too. Housewives was such a phenomenon, the number one show in the world in I think ’05 or ’06. And so I do hope people will if we let them know that we’re on. I think people enjoy seeing anybody from Housewives, but Teri and I are the only people that have reunited. I don’t think anybody else has. There’s been a lot of good feedback, the Hallmark movie did a huge number. So, hopefully, people that like Housewives will tune in. It was a lot of fun to shoot because Teri and I kept falling back into Mike and Susan and having to resist it because these characters are very different. But she’s so funny in this Fantasy Island episode and it's very much Susan. I hope they check it out.
The Fantasy Island James Denton-Teri Hatcher reunion episode airs on FOX-TV on Monday, January 16 at 8 p.m. ET.
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