James Denton may not get as much fanfare as the female stars of "Desperate Housewives," but the handsome actor has been a steady, hunky presence on the show for three seasons now, I had interviewed James during the first season of the show for a magazine proifile but our chat was on the phone. At the recent ABC Press Tour party, we had a chance to chat face-to-face and, at one point, I had one of those "I can't believe I just said that" moments.
But first, the actor and father of two small children, told me that life on Wisteria Lane had a nice blissfulness so far this season, off-screen, with Eva Longoria a newlywed and Marcia Cross a new mother of twins.
"We've found a nice equillibrium. We're filming the third episode and it's a lot of fun and it hasn't been a lot of fun before because there was a lot of pressure. So everything;s settled down and everyone seems happy. Everyone sort of found their comfort zone."
Denton, whose character of Mike Deflino married true love Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher) in a forest wedding attended only by Susan's daughter Julie (Andrea Bowen). The actor admitted to some mixed feelings about the plot development.
"The postive is definitely working with Teri and Andrea on a regular basis because I love them both, the bad thing is that Mike goes from being kind of a mysterious, interesting single guy to father of a teenager overnight. That's not all that sexy to most people. So it's a different character."
Then I said it: "Well, you could just be a new parent without a shirt on!"
Fortunately, it got a big laugh out of James Denton.
He went on to explain: "Mike doesn't know if he should be assertive or be a disciplinarian or back off and let them do their thing. So there's going to be a lot of fun domestic comedy that we're gonna play.""
But the Mike and Susan nuptuals were a long time in coming.
"It was time. These two had to go ahead and put up or shut up because people were going to star caring. I think [creator] Marc [Cherry] timed it pretty well and he waited as long as he could to put them together."
Cherry, a little later that same night, told me that Mike had some "dark things" that he would be facing this season so it seems that the early fun domestic episodes will not last too long!
At the start of season three, Mike Delfino spent many episodes in a coma then when he woke up, he had no memory,. Among the memories lost was being run down by a car being driven by Orsen Hodge (Kyle MacLachlan) who seemed to start off quite villainous but underwent a bit of a personality change as the season progressed.
"Kyle was gonna be the real bad guy in season three," Denton explained. "Everyone fell in love with him. He's such a brilliant actor that when we had a chance to keep him, they rewrote the story. So I don't know what's going to happen now because he ran me down. They're gonna have to come up with a reason or let it go, He was only going to be there for one year and he was going to get caught. But I'm glad he's staying around."
When I asked MacLachlan a few minutes later about how his running over Mike, he joked: "I did? Was that me driving?" "It's still there...it's one of those storylines that I don't know what's going to happen but I would love for them to revisit that a little bit, that would be kind of cool."