Teri Hatcher allegedly contributed to an already-icy environment on the set of “Desperate Housewives,” according to a former staffer.
“The writers weren’t barred from the set, but we weren’t exactly welcome,” Patty Lin, who worked on Season 1 of the hit ABC show, claimed in her new book, “End Credits: How I Broke Up With Hollywood.”
“Usually we’d only see the cast at table reads, where we’d sit quietly in the back and try not to make eye contact with Teri Hatcher.”
Lin did not elaborate on why staffers didn’t make eye contact with Hatcher, and reps for the actress did not immediately return Page Six’s request for comment.
This is not the first time there has been negative claims about one of the show’s leading actors.
In 2019, creator Marc Cherry alleged in a legal letter in support of Felicity Huffman, who was awaiting sentencing for the college admissions scandal at the time, that she was polite to a “big star” who displayed “big behavioral problems” on the “Desperate Housewives” set.
“Everyone tried their darndest to get along with this woman over the course of the show. It was impossible,” he wrote — without naming the actress.
“And things went from bad to worse. Felicity still insisted on saying, ‘Good morning’ to this actress, even though she knew she wouldn’t get a response. I found out about this and asked Felicity about it.”
Cherry further claimed that the unnamed actress was “determined to be rude.”
Aside from Hatcher, 60, and Huffman, 58, Eva Longoria, Nicollette Sheridan and Marcia Cross starred on the hit series, which lasted for eight seasons from 2004 to 2012.
Lin also claimed in her book, which hit shelves on Tuesday, that Cherry himself exhibited toxic behavior.
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She wrote that the TV producer and writer showed “overt racism,” citing as an example a time when he compared Lin to comedian Margaret Cho, who is of Korean descent.
“One day at lunch, the topic of Margaret Cho came up, and someone mentioned ‘All-American Girl,’ Cho’s short-lived sitcom about a Korean American family. Marc turned to me and said, ‘Patty, you should write a show like that,'” she wrote.
“I love Margaret Cho, but please don’t lump us together just because we’re both Asian women in show business.”
Lin accused Cherry of telling his staff to “gang bang” a draft without the knowledge of the original writer.
“With this wildly inefficient system, it’s a miracle that any episodes of ‘Desperate Housewives’ ever got made,” she added.
“The quality that had attracted me to the pilot — the dark humor — was lost in the slapdash, assembly-line approach to what was supposed to be a creative process.”
Lin was fired from the series after the first season, which she wrote was “no surprise” after being excluded from multiple writers meetings.
“I knew our days were numbered,” she wrote of her and two others who weren’t called in to work. “I had to remind myself over and over that I hated this job and wanted out.”
Reps for Cherry and ABC did not immediately return Page Six’s request for comment.
