Nicolette Sheridan must have drawn the short straw in the Desperate Housewives movie offers. Felicity Huffman got an Oscar nomination, Eva Longoria got to play a kick-ass tough girl but Sheridan has to do a panty dance on Cedric the Entertainer. She plays a femme fatale in the spy spoof Code Name: The Cleaner, trying to extract information from his amnesiac janitor.
"It came to me from the producers who sent me the script, and when I read it and found out that Cedric was attached, naturally it was a shoe-in," Sheridan said. "Everything that I've ever seen him in I've found him to be quite brilliant. We did a read through actually here at this hotel [The Four Seasons] and we had a big cast of people. When Cedric's scenes and mine came up we just started riffing and playing and adlibbing. There was a chemistry there that I felt could really work and it ended up being as much fun as I knew it was going to be once I walked out of the read through."
When it came time to actually perform the seduction, Sheridan was a bit out of her Desperate comfort zone. "First of all, my character Diane in this film is a very straight laced, hardcore, head of security bad ass. So she had to think on her feet in order to try and get this information out of Cedric's character and comes up with this dance, having to seduce him into jogging his memory since supposedly that's what would get him to remember something. So I think that being in character as well as exposing one's self in that way, as big as a Cadillac on the screen was a little intimidating. It's easier when it's a small box even though those screens are getting quite large."
Sheridan does get to flex her muscles a bit in a fight scene with Lucy Liu. You might not know, but Sheridan does have some training. "We got together with the stunt coordinator and basically choreographed the fight. Both of have a little foundation in martial arts. We tried to choreograph it in a way that looked very authentic and tough. People had been calling it the cat fight which we just didn't like. It's not a hair pulling, slapping, nail breaking fight. This was combinations and roundhouses and throwing punches and dodging kicks. It was the real deal."
It's hard keeping a TV and movie career going at the same time, so doing Code Name: The Cleaner required a total commitment. "Time is so limited. When I did The Cleaner I was literally flying from set to set, from Wisteria Lane to Vancouver, and I didn't have a day off for a couple of months. I think the adrenaline gets you through that, and especially when you're enjoying yourself it doesn't hit you that hard until it ends. Then it's like, 'Okay, I need that day off.'"
Back on Wisteria Lane, things are looking good for Edie. She got the guy this year, and then dumped him when he turned out to be a likely murderer. "I think that when someone goes into a coma they do tend to come out of it and be quite agitated, and I don't think that the plumber ended up being what Edie had signed up for. So, that coupled with him being arrested which just threw her right back into the mother daughter relationship that she had because her mother was an alcoholic and ended up in jail and I think that sitting in that jail cell with him was too much for her to handle. So she panicked and basically ended it on the spot due to the fear of reliving moments and feelings and loss of love in her childhood."
The show's renewed success has been credited to the return of creator Marc Cherry, but Sheridan defends her main gig. "Marc Cherry never left, but he's extremely hands on this year and getting back to what made it work the first season which to me was the aspect of how politically incorrect it was and how it was just pushing boundaries and the bizarre situations, the situations that people think they would behave a certain way in, but if they did they would probably get arrested. So it's back on track and I think that there is a new energy from everyone. There are new writers and everyone is just inspired again."
Perhaps it is Sheridan's own influence that has led to Edie's more interesting storylines. "We all have ideas and Marc Cherry is amazing in that way. You can walk into his office and say, 'This isn't quite working. I don't think that we're being true to the character by making that choice. How would you feel about x, y, or z?' He will listen and he will love some of it. He will argue his thoughts on other parts of it. You usually get the script for the next episode the night before you started shooting, but you can see where it's leading. Like, if you're seeing something that doesn't resonate I will call him and he always takes my call and says, 'I know if you're calling there is something that I should be looking at.' So that's nice."
Code Name: The Cleaner opens January 5 to tide you over until Desperate Housewives returns.
