See Also: Marc Cherry (Creator) People Guide

Desperate Housewives showrunner Marc Cherry recently revealed that he never expected the show to eat up so much of his creativity.

"The sad surprise has been the things I thought would take a whole season to reveal, I revealed by episode six," he told Kate O'Hare at Zap2It. "I think when I first talked to [new ABC entertainment chief Steve McPherson] about, 'Oh, I've got ideas into season three,' sadly, he doesn't know that just aired last night."

Luckily for Cherry, he's got at least one fertile source of inspiration - his mother. Zap2It recalled how Cherry once told of being with his mother while watching a newcast about Andrea Yates - a woman who stood accused of drowning her five children in a bathtub. "I turned to [my mother], and I said, 'Gosh, can you imagine a woman being so desperate that she would hurt her own children?' And my mother took her cigarette out of her mouth, turned to me and said, 'I've been there.' And I remember saying, 'What?'"

For Cherry, his mom had always been the perfect wife and mother, but then she told him she'd frequently felt desperate while having to care for her son all on her own, as her husband was away pursuing a university degree. "I was astounded," Cherry said. "Suddenly it occurred to me, 'Well, gosh, if my mom has had these moments, every woman has had a moment where she's close to losing it.' So truly as I started talking to her and fining out these things, the genesis of the idea was born in that."

With such a personal connection to his story, it makes sense Cherry feels protective about his show. He confirmed this when speaking about an early development meeting he had with an ABC executive. "[He] said he felt I should change the title to, The Secret Lives of Housewives. And I remember saying to him - I had said to him how collaborative he would find me to work with - then he said that, and I went, 'I'll quit if you make me change the title.'"

More from Cherry, including his feelings about sudden success and the news that he currently drives a car with the license plate DSP HSWV, check out the full Zap2It article.

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