See Also: 'Pretty Little Picture' Episode Guide
See Also: Teri Hatcher (Susan Mayer) People Guide

When Teri Hatcher (Susan Mayer) found out she had to appear naked in only the third episode of Desperate Housewives, she took drastic measures to make sure she looked good: she stopped eating altogether.

"It was six in the morning, and the wardrobe department had spent a lot of time stressing about how I was going to be covered," Hatcher recently told the Dutch TV program SBS Shownieuws. "I was kind of covered with tape, but they wanted it open on the side, so that you could see stuff that maybe you'd think you shouldn't be seeing. So I was very exposed to the crew, more exposed to the crew than I was exposed on the film. And I was so mortified about it, I hadn't eaten in like two days, because when you know you have to take your clothes off in front of the camera, you just stop eating. I just took my robe off and I went, okay, everybody, just look, because I'm mortified, and I just have to get it over, because we're looking at it all day long, and so here it is. And they all laughed, and I laughed."

In the sequence, which appeared in the episode "Pretty Little Picture," Susan's towel is caught in the door of her ex-husband's car, leaving her completely nude and with no way to get back into her house. Things get only more embarassing for her when Mike Delfino sees her this way. But Teri Hatcher seemed to have had more fun with these scenes than her character. "It was down to like the most minute piece of ivy. That was a team effort, getting that piece. That was amazing. That was probably the most fun I ever had, that whole sequence. I loved it."

SBS Shownieuws recalled that Hatcher's "Pretty Little Picture" sequence wasn't the first time her good looks had impressed viewers. The program showed some footage from her TV debut on the Love Boat, in which Hatcher danced around in the skimpy outfit worn by the Love Boat Mermaids. "That was the first job I had," Hatcher said, "and I actually left my math degree in college to go do that. I made SAG scale, which at the time was probably about $1000 a week. You know, I came from a family that hadn't heard of a thousand dollars a week."

If Hatcher is impressing people now, this wasn't always the case. The actress told the program what she was like in high school: "I was not the cool girl. I remember clearly being at a dance, like a prom dance, in the eight grade, and being a wallflower. So I finally went up to a kind of cute boy in eight grade, and asked him if he would dance, and he went, 'No.' And I was just crushed."

These days, Hatcher feels much more secure, and not as "burdened" as she was in her youth. But deep inside, the actress still feels the girl from eight grade lurking within her, and it's these aspects of her personality that she also recognises in her Desperate Housewives character. "Susan is very connected to me right now. You know, I'm a single mom, I'm divorced, I'm a fumbling quirky idiot that never things go well for. I never go out on a date." The actress laughed. "It's just a little too close, okay?"

In the full interview, Hatcher discussed her sporting and eating habits, and both her co-stars and DH co-creator Marc Cherry talked about what makes Hatcher a good actress. In the Netherlands, Desperate Housewives airs on Tuesday evenings on SBS's sister station, Net 5.

Discuss this news item at Talk Desperate!
 Add Get Desperate! RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!