James Denton, who famously starred as Mike Delfino on Desperate Housewives, had to awkwardly exit with his character’s death, ironically breaking the hearts of many viewers at the time. Speaking to People magazine, the actor admitted that it was “a lot of fun” to shoot on screen and that the episode is his favorite episode to date.
“The one where I was shot,” he said, talking about that episode of the ABC comedy-drama. “It’s always fun to have fun on camera,” he said. The actor also further shared some behind-the-scenes details about when one of his favorite on-screen characters was shot in Season 8, Episode 16.
In the series his character Mike, the partner of Susan Meyer (Teri Hatcher), was killed in a drive-by shooting in front of their fictional home on Wisteria Lane. Denton revealed that filming the scene included special effects and a tubing rig to simulate blood.
“You’ve got a tube attached to one leg of your pants, pumping blood up to your chest, and a wire running down your other leg,” the actor said, pointing to a man hiding in the bushes with a detonator. The blast has happened. “And you could only do it two or three times, and that’s the whole day,” he recalled.
But jokes aside, the scene was just as intense and emotional for Denton, especially filming Mike’s final moments with his wife Susan. At the scene, he pushed her out of the way, took the bullet and saved her life.
Denton recalled filming that scene with co-star Teri Hatcher, describing her performance as “brilliant”. He remembered her lying in his lap and bleeding while a large crane shot the scene from above, as there were no drones at the time.
He added, “She’s just sobbing uncontrollably. And she did that the whole day. And it was very hard for me not to break down and cry because she was so heartbreaking.” The actor admitted that considering the number of characters killed off during the show’s run, it was shocking for Mike to survive so long in the series.
“People joked throughout the program, ‘Who’s going to get killed,’ you know,” he revealed, explaining that the show was known for being “salacious”, but had fewer sex scenes and murders. There were too many. He added, “We killed off 56 characters.”