Welcome to desperately devoted.
Think of us as your favorite neighbors as we chat about life and relationships, all.
While we revisit the iconic show Desperate Housewives together.
I'm Terry Hatcher, I'm Andrea Bowen.
And I'm Emerson tunny Mery Christmas.
In certain little jingle bell sounds. You ever say Terry Christmas?
No, we never do.
Well.
I'm going to We're.
Gonna start now.
But we're gonna start now. We're going to add that to the traditions. Okay, Okay. On Christmas. On Christmas Morning, I'm usually so exhausted because I've thrown a gigantic sit down dinner for like twenty six people on Christmas Eve where I make all the food and then we stay out late and we exchange presents in white Elephant game.
And I make this amazing Christmas cocktail that we call Winter in California, and it's a tequila chai maple simple syrup and lemon juice.
And is it served warm?
No, Okay, it's shaken cold, okay. And I make the chi simple syrup the night before and it's kind of become my specialty. I mean it for years.
Yeah, And chai simple Chai simple syrup is actually pretty simple because you just simple syrup is just one to one sugar water.
So it's just sugar, and then your chai tea.
That, yeah, and then you add like usually like a whole box of oh, because I like to have very strong, yeah, really strong if you want to do that, and then you just boil it for not that long like the sugar melts, and then you let the tea bags sit in.
It and you have that Christmas Eve.
Yeah, we're hungover now by the time when you get to Christmas morning, uh, where we are like lagging. And so what we had the tradition we have is that Emerson and myself and my mom I always get matching pajamas. This year, I've gotten them from a company called print Fresh, which I'm a huge fan of, and they sent us red silky pajamas with gingerbread all over them. So there's like ginger red houses and gingerbread men, and they're so
cute and so comfy and so silky. And so then the other thing we do is, since I'm so fried from the Christmas Eve, I do no cooking on Christmas morning. We get in advance bagels and locks and all of the cream, cheese and scones and muffins, and then we do what's called a blind champagne tasting. So I will go out and get a cheap champagne, a medium price champagne, and an expensive champagne, and I put them in brown bags. And then all morning while we're opening presents, we keep
trying the different champagne. And then by the end of Christmas Day afternoon, we're either too drunk to know or we do know which one is the expensive champagne and which one is the cheap sampagne. So that's what I'm doing on Christmas.
That's a fabulous tradition and a fabulous tradition. And this Christmas we are opening a version of our own presence together the three of us. What your questions from you are desperately devoted listeners.
We're so excited to get some of these questions that you guys have been sending in and we appreciate you so much for going on this fun journey with us, and as our little Christmas gift to you, we wanted to do this special episode where we get to some of those burning questions.
So well, I want to dive right in because the first question is to you mom. Oh, this question comes from Gene okay, and Jane says, Emerson talked, that's me. Emerson talked about how she remembers how you felt coming home after Mike's death scenes, Terry, can you remember that day and how your body reacted even though you knew it was just acting.
Yeah, well, I remember us talking about that a little bit, and I mean I was actually surprised that and touched and also like a little bit like, oh my god. I hope that wasn't a bad memory for you, remembering that like so viscerally. But I'm you know, the physical thing that I recall coming up a lot. Actually that
was a really dramatic example of it. But whenever Susan had to cry, So when I cry in real life, when my body cries, whether or not I am acting or it's just my personal life, I have the structure of me. I get really puffy under my eyes and it is like really puffies, and then when I go to sleep, then it's even worse the next morning. So if you're shooting a show and one day your character has to be sobbing crying, and then the next day.
Your character has to be like, you know, doing a fashion show at a modeling thing, you know, my makeup. An artist and I would really work on what can we do so that I can show up at work the next morning without baggy eyes, like it was a real thing. And that's just something that I recall about, you know, the physicality of like I can know that I'm pretending, but my body doesn't know that I'm pretending, and so I still end up with puffy, tired eyes
for like a couple of days. Like when I have a good cry, you know, it doesn't lead to good results.
I inherited that from you. I've been told that I'm a pretty crier in the moment, and I've always said, well just wait till you see me the next day. I'm not able to open my eyes.
Well, Emerson, I'm going to pivot to a question that I'm reading here for you, which is from Margarita, and she asks, from a writing perspective, what is an aspect of ensemble storytelling that you find most compelling and how have you seen this depicted in the episodes you have watched so far.
Wow, this is a great question, Margarita. Thank you. I think on Stumble. Storytelling is probably one of the most difficult types of storytelling to embark upon and to take on, and Desperate Housewives does it so successfully and this first season,
I feel like we've really seen to me. I think the hallmark that I feel whether it's a feature film or in TV, and I'll use Desperate Housewives as a jumping off point of really successful ensemble storytelling is the ability to balance distinct identities and voices in the dialogue of each of the characters while letting their lives overlap and interweave. And I think as a writer, I just finished writing a draft of a movie that's an ensemble piece.
It's for lead girls, and it was something I was really checking in with with myself as I was writing, of how am I making sure that each of these girls has a really distinct voice. So I'm the writer, I am writing all the dialogue. My voice is Emerson's voice, But how am I not making everyone sound like me? And I think a lot of that comes from creating
really strong backstories. I think in Desperate Housewives, all of these women have come to Wisteria Lane and come to this moment in their lives with a rich backstory.
Although I had noticed, and I would challenge everybody to go look at this. I noticed that many of the characters use the word sweetie. Oh interesting you know, Oh do you like, oh sweetie, come here to do this sum And I remember thinking why, why do you know? And maybe some maybe it would be maybe some actors took it out. I think I took it out, like I was like, I don't think Susan uses the word sweety all the time.
Right, But that's really smart acting on your part to be in tuned to that.
But I think Mark Cherry uses the word sweetie, and I think that's why it made it into so much of the dialogue. And I will say as a I really respect that. As a writer, it is the number one thing when you're reading a bad script. You know it's bad because all the characters talk the same. Yeah, they use the same language, they use the same rhythm, they use the same words like, and you just go, this is really bad writing. Yeah, because there's no differentiation
between who these characters are. Yeah.
I pride myself on dialogue being my favorite thing to write. For that, Ye, you're very good at it, well, thank you. But and sometimes though to an extreme extent, like if I'm out in public, which is I typically go out of my house when I'm working on a script, and i will be talking to myself because I'm trying to imagine.
I mean, I'm not an actor, but I have amazing actors I know, like you too, and I'm trying to imagine how an actor would embody this character and deliver their line as I'm writing it so it feels authentic. But the result is if you were to look at me from across the coffee shop or wherever I am, is me assuming different like body postures and mouthing whole sentences to myself and being like and I'm and this is not going to translate well to the podcast, but
I do look a little okay, Okay. Another question, which I love is from Abby and it's to me. She says, Emerson, you've all talked about your mom being an amazing cook and having great food around the house all the time. What is something she makes that is your favorite? Okay, so there's a bajillion answers I could have to this question, but since it's Christmas, I want to make this a kind of holiday themed response, and I can think of two dishes that to me really typify Christmas in the
Hatcher household. And one is her I Love You a Lot eggplant castle. This involves really thinly slicing layers of eggplant, salting them, letting them sit so all the bitter water comes out of the eggplant, and then grilling them on
the griddle in olive oil. And then basically she layers the grilled rounds of eggplant in a cast iron skillet with a homemade tomato sauce that she makes from woodfire like roasted in the oven tomatoes and caramelized onions and sometimes anchovies or sometimes capers and olives, and it is just delicious. It is so umabi. And yeah, she layers that the eggplant and the tomato sauce up and up and up until it fills up a whole cast iron skillet. And then you can put basil on top, you can
add parmesan cheese, you can make it vegan. It really is just delicious. And then the next dish is also kind of a cast iron skillet layered into oblivion dish, and that actually might have to be my number one favorite dish. It's a sweet potato ana, which is basically you could make it. I mean, you could look up the recipe for regular like a potato ana. It's kind
of a classic French dish, I believe. But we use white sweet potatoes, and so you mandolin them on a mandolin really really really thin rounds, wayh thinner than the eggplant from the I love you a lot of eggplant dish.
And then you basically just layer those, you know, raw shaved circles of sweet potato again in a cast iron skillet, and you do like a circle of layering the sweet potatoes, and then you brush it with melted butter and put a little bit of salt, and then you do another layer of sweet potatoes and brush it with butter and do more salt, and you build that up and up and up until it fills up the whole cast iron skillet.
And then you just bake that in the oven at around like three seventy five four hundred, maybe even three point fifty. Play with your temperature, mom, correct me, and then you just let it cook in there for like an hour hour and a half until it gets so caramelized and the edges get crispy and almost a little burnt, and the sweet potatoes just get gooey and yummy, and oh I could eat that all the time, except it takes so long to make I only ever really eat
it around Christmas. Yeah, okay, well, thank you for that question, Abby. I am salivating now. I am so excited to eat that.
That's a great question.
Merry Christmas to you guys.
Happy holidays.
I hope you got all the goodies that you put on your list for Santa. I hope they brought you everything.
I hope your house smells like pine and chimney smoke and just delicious, yummy things.
And we are so grateful that you have stayed with us through the first season of watching Desperate Housewives and all of the conversations we've had. We love reading your messages and hearing your comments and your feedback, and we are just so desperately devoted to you as always. And Happy holidays.
Yeah, go make yourself Christmas in California. Cocktail.
I feel like we need to like jingle Bell our way out of Yes.