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Report: 'Housewives' Flip Out at Shoot

Apr 5, 6:09 PM (ET)

NEW YORK (AP) - They may appear sultry and ready for summer on the May cover of Vanity Fair, but according to the magazine, the stars of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" were actually steaming angry.

Vanity Fair's cover proclaims: "You wouldn't believe what it took just to get this photo!" The article acknowledges that the poolside photo-shoot, in which the five women appear in different colored bathing suits, was manned by an ABC representative who was to make sure that certain demands were met - including that Teri Hatcher didn't select her wardrobe first or appear in the center of any group photo.

"Whatever you do," the ABC rep, who wasn't identified by name, said when he arrived on the set, "do not let Teri go to wardrobe first."

Despite the rep's plea, Hatcher was the first "housewife" to visit wardrobe, and she had consulted with the stylist days in advance. At one point, the rep proclaimed: "This is a problem. I'm getting text messages from Eva (Longoria). Everything is not fine."


The struggles continued once the photographer started snapping. Redhead Marcia Cross turned red-hot when she saw Hatcher standing next to her in the center of the shot, according to the article. Cross grabbed her bathrobe and stormed egoff, spewing expletives at the ABC rep.

Hatcher later walked to the other end of the set, where "she got into a tearful, heated conversation on her cell phone."

In the fold-out May cover, which hits newsstands April 12, the center position belongs to Nicollette Sheridan, who's flanked by Hatcher and Cross with Longoria and Felicity Huffman posed beneath them on a chaise - although Cross and Huffman can't been seen when the cover is folded.

Also in the article, the women discuss the media blitz surrounding the show and its stars. Huffman believes a "Desperate" backlash is imminent while Cross just ignores it all.

"Honestly, I don't read it," Cross told Vanity Fair of the media coverage. "And I don't even watch the show right now. It's too much. It's just too much..."

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Hate Bree? Blame that red flip

By Mariella Savidge
Tribune Newspapers: The Morning Call
Published April 5, 2005


Admit it. You don't like Bree Van De Kamp. You know, the one from Wisteria Lane? You're not supposed to. It's not just the prissyness or the twin sets with the pearls that turn you off, or the nosiness or the control issues.

It's that hair.

And it's enough to make a normal woman wither between inadequacy and revulsion. It's that hair, however, that draws actor Marcia Cross immediately into character as the controlling uber-housewife on ABC's runaway Sunday night hit, "Desperate Housewives."

In real life, Cross' red hair finds itself in a ponytail most days, just like other mere mortals. But once her hairdresser, Quakertown, Pa., native Nicole Frank flips that do into place, Cross becomes the Susie-homemaker-from-hell.

"Marcia's a completely different person than Bree," Frank says as her voice abruptly drops to a whisper.

"I'll have to call you back, they're rolling," she says from the closed Los Angeles set where the show has been taping several season finales. The one that will air will be chosen later.

Frank had a good bit of input in the development of Bree's "look," the red flip that's possibly one of the most recognizable symbols of the show. She calls herself a "hair nerd" who goes to movies to study the tresses instead of enjoy the plots.

In her down time, she pores over period hairstyles that say who a character is at first glance.

Prim would be a good way to describe Bree's do; totally under control, precision cut and a throwback to the 1950s are other ways, though one wonders when the description of hair stops and description of Bree begins.

In real life, Cross is "the sweetest, most loving, shy, caring person I've ever met," Frank says, "She's so wonderful and funny, nothing like Bree."

Indeed, it's the hairstyle that has made Bree the woman she is today, Frank says, and she's happy to have been a part of its design.

Cross makes up the other half of the mutual admiration society with high praise for Frank.

"Nicole does my hair for the show, but also for special occasions," Cross says in a phone interview. "I trust her implicitly."

When they were choosing that hair, Cross says, they were trying to let the viewer understand the gestalt of Bree before she ever opened her mouth.

"This woman is not with it, she's just not right. From the hairdo she's never grown out of -- very traditional -- you can tell she has not evolved, that her soul is frozen," Cross says.

Indeed Cross and Frank tried to bring Bree kicking and screaming into the present during one recent taping with a kind of a messy take on Bree's usual look.

It was a no-go, Cross says. The director ordered her hair done the usual way immediately.

Frank and Cross started working together before the show's debut, when Frank went to Cross' home to work on the then-yet-to-be-determined look. It was a chance assignment on a show that, at that time, was yet to be a hit.

Makes it happen

But Frank knows hair. In addition, she has a reputation among her peers as a talented and hard worker. She loves the idea that hair, in addition to makeup and wardrobe, transport an actor from a regular person to the character they play. And she loves making that happen.

Throughout a person's life, normal evolutions in hairstyle and clothing tap into new awareness of who one is or is becoming, says Francine Roussel, an assistant professor of theater at Muhlenberg College who is also a professional actor and director. Roussel has been seen in "Sex and the City" and will play a French interpreter in the upcoming film "The Interpreter," starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn.

Likewise, she says, when an actor plays a role, a change in hair can be a throwback to the traditional mask.

"That's when your subconscious connects with that `other' in you," Roussel says, "You have the potential to play any part, and then you are that person."

"And once you find and connect with your character, it's like a magnet. You're pulled in so that the character becomes alive. It's an incredible sense of freedom . . . it's what drives an actor," she says.

Frank knows she has done a good job after she works on Cross for the 20 minutes it takes to create the Bree Van De Kamp look.

Transformation

"It transforms her and gets her to the place she needs to be for a performance," Frank says.

"The first day I met Marcia, I went to her house to cut her hair," she says. During the session, they talked about the Bree character as a sort of unfunny Stepford wife -- campy, but not a laughingstock.

"It's a delicate balance," she said, and Bree evolved from the discussion.

Years ago, when Frank was in high school, she loved doing hair, and planned her career around it. But her father insisted she go to college.

A 1991 graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, she majored in English. "I figured it's my native tongue, how hard could it be? I also have a minor in journalism," she says.

Still, she was happiest working with hair, so she moved to Las Vegas, where she furthered her education and earned her stylist's license.

She tried out for a job in the salon at the Bellagio Hotel, but since 200 people were applying for 11 jobs, she didn't think she had a chance. She arrived at the hotel with a friend on whom she planned to create a "wicked style." The result was that she was hired on the spot.

Several years later she quit the Bellagio, though she still has a hefty respect for the "hands-on" management style of its owner, Steve Wynn. But she'll never go back to salon work, she says.

Headed to L.A.

Knowing it would be a challenge to get a job, Frank headed to Los Angeles, where she was hired as a non-union hairdresser on the 2004 movie "Spartan," with Val Kilmer.

Several days later, the movie "rolled union," she says, meaning the non-union job became a union job and she was allowed to join.

Breaking into the business is incredibly hard, and depends on luck, who you know and being at the right place at the right time.

She declines to say how much she makes, but says she can easily support herself in an area where the cost of living is high.

And she has come so far not only because of her talent, but because of the work ethic she learned growing up. "Showing up is 90 percent of the job," she says, which sounds fairly elementary, except that in California there's a different mind-set.

"The sense of entitlement reeks. And it's everywhere, whether you're driving or parking or standing in line at Starbucks," she says.

Still, she loves being a part of show business and can pretty much write her own ticket, she says, as far as working in television goes, which suits her.

"My niche is in TV, and there's more opportunity in television to do good work. If you do a bad job, nobody hesitates to tell you," she says, unlike working in a salon, where the atmosphere is kind of sneaky and cutthroat and never very honest.

The best hairdressers really do rise to the top of their craft in television, she says, and that's why she wants to stay.

"There are so many variables, it's never the same."

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