After playing Kimberly Shaw in “Melrose Place” and Bree Van de Kamp in “Desperate Housewives,” Marcia Cross is ready for her next iconic role.
“I always assumed that after ‘Desperate Housewives’ there will be a third act. It has not happened yet. That’s the double-edged sword of being an ‘icon.’ Everybody thinks you are that character and by the time they forget about it, you are not on anybody’s list anymore,” she said at Series Mania in Lille, France.
“I am at this funny crossroad: I am this incredibly ripe human and yet Hollywood is not particularly interested. We are tackling LGBTQ+ issues, although there is still a long way to go, we are talking about people of color, but – and I hate to say it – we don’t love to see older women. We were 40-year-old women doing ‘DH’ and that was a big deal. Now, I want to see 60-year-old women.”
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Especially the ones who are complicated.
“That’s my favorite thing. I will leave it to the writers, to figure out something fabulous.”
Cross, welcomed with a standing ovation, admitted she still hasn’t seen the last episode of the show created by Marc Cherry, which ended in 2012.
“And I won’t!”
“I was exhausted [back then] because I had worked all these years, I gave birth to twins, my husband had cancer for a little while. I crawled to the finish line in terms of my physicality. But I remember that night, sitting with the girls and Marc. It was terrible.”
The actor, more recently seen in the likes of “Quantico” and Netflix’s “You,” also discussed her earlier roles, studies at Juilliard and even her “tiny little room” at YMCA.
“I saw these things going up and down and went: ‘I think these are cockroaches.’ Then I went to the communal bathroom and went: ‘I think these are hookers.’ I was thrilled. I was in New York!,” she laughed, urging young actors to persevere.
“No one is going to say: ‘What a great idea, to go into arts.’ You don’t get a lot of credit for being an artist or for being different. They call us the outliers, but we are really the leaders.”
The role of Kimberly Shaw on “Melrose Place” brought her stability, she said.
“I lost somebody in the middle of it [longtime partner Richard Jordan], then they called me asking if I wanted to go back. I remember being thrown a lifeline, because I was grieving so terribly. When I look at it now, it’s my life in grief.”
But after that the offers dried up, with Cross considering another career as a therapist.
“If you do something well and you are known for it, the industry goes: ‘She can only do that.’ My agents at the time couldn’t get me a part that would be normal. I almost left the business,” she said.
“The one thing you always have to do is endure. Endure the bad times. Nobody wanted to do anything with Van Gogh when he was alive! It’s no small thing, being an artist. It hurts. And you can’t cut it all off.”
Luckily, “Everwood” and “Desperate Housewives” followed, although Cross was interested in the part of Mary Alice at first, ultimately played by Brenda Strong.
“I wanted a family and I didn’t have a partner. I wanted to adopt a baby and be at home with [the child]. Marc hasn’t really seen ‘Melrose Place,’ which was probably a good thing, and said: ‘I want you to read for Bree.’ It changed my life, for sure,” she said, recalling the exact moment when she knew the show was a hit.
“I was getting on a plane to do ‘Oprah.’ That’s when you know.”
The complicated relationship between Bree and her son Andrew turned her into a “gay icon,” observed the moderator.
“I am very proud of that,” said Cross. She is also proud of her role as the anal cancer spokesperson, the role that nobody wanted.
“What are the odds that I am playing the most uptight character on TV and then I get the kind of cancer that nobody wants to talk about?! I wish I could say it was bold, but I felt like I didn’t have a choice: I am sure that people are alive because of me or my friends who started the HPV alliance,” she noted.
“I can go on about the anus, how important it is, how great it is. You can either cringe at it or you can laugh, but I felt like it was put in my lap for a reason.”