Now that ‘Desperate Housewives’ has rejuvenated her television career, Emmy-winning actress Dana Delany will be starring in the new ABC procedural drama ‘Body of Proof’, which promises to be one of the top contenders of the fall season.

In the series, she plays neurosurgeon-turned-medical examiner Dr. Megan Hunt, a charming yet snarky individual who she likens herself to be the female version of House. The dramatic pilot balances her professional cases with her private travails, including reconnecting with her estranged daughter.

But does this dynamic role mean the end of her run on ‘Desperate Housewives’? At the end of last season, Katherine Mayfair (Delany) and reformed stripper Robin Gallagher (Julie Benz) were off to Paris for a romantic vacation. Since Delany and Benz both have new ABC series in the fall, their characters’ fates are up in the air.

With burning questions in hand, TV Squad caught up with Delany at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival to get the lowdown on her new show and her possible ‘Housewives’ future.

With ‘Desperate Housewives’ you have thrived in an ensemble setting. Do you feel more pressure now that ‘Body of Proof’ is going to be centered on you?
It will be different. I have to say that ‘Housewives’ is the easiest job in the world because there are so many great actresses on it, and you only work two or three days a week. It’s so well-produced, and this is a whole new gamble. I don’t know how it’s going to be. We’re shooting in Rhode Island, so it’s going to be a challenge to uproot my life to shoot there in Providence. [Editor's note: The show is set in Philadelphia.] It’s going to be a whole new thing — new writers, new cast, new character.

The pilot is engaging because your character combines a bit of Katherine Mayfair and a bit of ['China Beach' protagonist] Colleen McMurphy.
That’s a good comparison.

Are you channeling some of your past roles into this? Or are you totally looking at in a completely different way?
I’m looking at it in a new way, but I’m me, I’m not Meryl Streep. [laughs] She’s the one who can transform herself.

What really drew you to ‘Body of Proof’?
It’s a very well-written, and it’s a great character. She’s complex, she’s strong, she’s smart, you don’t always like her. I like playing characters that are little complicated and that you don’t necessarily like at first, then you grow to appreciate them. I don’t worry about being liked. I like to be more challenged than that.

For you, in what ways is this different than other medical dramas?
I think ABC always wanted to have a procedural because they’ve done so well for CBS. Who would not want to have that? They think of themselves as more of a character network, more character-driven, so this one has a great character, and a lot of stuff is going to be motivated more by the character than the plot.

Does this mean that you’re definitely leaving ‘Desperate Housewives’?
We don’t know. It depends on what happens with this. We’ll know by the ratings. When this got picked up, Marc [Cherry, the showrunner] very nicely sent me a big thing of flowers with a little note that said, “I’ll be here waiting.” So I wrote him back and said, “I like a man who waits.”

How is this new series going to change things? Before ‘Desperate Housewives’ you always enjoyed your life and enjoyed traveling. How have things changed since?
I’m a little tired. I’m a little daunted because I’m not young. After I finish here [in Monte-Carlo], I’m going to the Caribbean for a week, just myself and nobody else, with a stack of books and my new iPad. I’m just going to lie on the beach and read. I’m going to need that because once we start on this it’s be all me and all these medical words that I don’t understand.

Would you have done the same thing six or seven years ago?
Probably not. I think ‘Desperate Housewives’ took me by surprise, how much I enjoyed it. I forgot how much I like doing television and forgot how much I like being part of an ensemble. I just like acting. That’s all. I just really like to act, and it makes me happy.

In the recent past you have talked about wanting to get married, but at the same time you’re not sure if you can find someone who could accept your freewheeling lifestyle. Do you still find it a challenge after all these years to find a relationship with someone who will quite understand your lifestyle?
People think I’m a little odd, especially for a woman. If you’re not married by my age there’s something wrong with you or you’re a lesbian or something. But I think people are coming around to my point of view. I think people are realizing that freedom is so underrated, that you can just do what you want. You can still have relationships, you just make sure that they’re with people who understand that you’re you and they’re them. I have a friend who says that if everybody just did what they wanted it would be a happier place. The key is to be honest about it. You can’t lie about it. I couldn’t pick up right now and go to Providence if I was married. I think Jeri [Ryan, my co-star] is going to have a hard time because she has two kids, and I think she’s freaking out. But I can do that.

Do you think we’ll be seeing more characters like you on television — mature women who are independent and doing what they want?
Obviously, there are great roles for women on television. Glenn Close, Edie Falco and Laura Linney are all [doing] great now. But it’s interesting because I went to this More magazine convention in Chicago, and I think there is a groundswell of women now who realize that marriage isn’t what it’s cracked up to be and are really okay about that. A lot of people are coming up to me saying, “Thank you for saying it’s OK not to get married.” Everyone feels pressure — it’s the urge to merge. You’re told that you should be with somebody.

‘Sex and the City 2′ got trashed by a lot of people. It’s like those women are now being punished for behavior that people liked from them in the past because of their age.
That’s too bad. I haven’t seen the movie. On this show ['Body of Proof'] we are going to have a costume designer who is 74 years old. She showed up at my house dressed in high heels, a skintight white suit with white and blue hair, and her 35-year-old boyfriend dropped her off. I thought, “Ok, that’s still possible.” It’s whatever you want it to be.

Who’s your favorite fashion designer?
Prada. It just fits me well, I think it’s artistic. I appreciate what she does.

Why did you choose the character of Dr. Megan Hunt as your next role?
It chose me. ABC called me and said they’d like me to do this role, and I said, “Don’t I already have a job?” And they said, “Maybe not.” I’m in this maze of life where I want to keep going, so I thought, “All right, why not?”

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I posted part of this interview already, but here’s the full one.

Playing a woman with marital turmoil is familiar territory for Emmy-winning actress Dana Delany. On the TV series “Desperate Housewives,” she was Katherine Mayfair, who had her share of drama and surprises in her love life. In the independent dramedy film “Multiple Sarcasms” (set in New York City in 1979), Delany is a wife and mother named Annie Richmond, who is also dealing with an unsteady marriage, but her marital problems are more subtle than what viewers might see on “Desperate Housewives.”

Annie’s husband, Gabriel (played by Timothy Hutton), is an architect facing a mid-life crisis as he works on a semi-autobiographical play. As Gabriel tries to avoid his day job as much as possible, working on his play makes him realize his true feelings for wife and his best friend, Cari (played by Mira Sorvino), and how those feelings might affect their relationships with each other and with Gabriel and Annie’s only child, Elizabeth (played by India Ennenga). At the New York City press junket for “Multiple Sarcasms,” I sat down with Delany, who talked about her recent roles that explore marital difficulties, what she thinks of the real-life scandalous “Desperate Housewives” lawsuit, and what she would be doing with her ife if she weren’t an actress.

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Dana Delany’s kooky and entirely crazy ‘Desperate Housewives’ character, Katherine Mayfair, may currently be ensconced in France with her new lesbian lover, but we may not have seen the last of her. Delany is waiting to find out if her new show, ‘Body of Proof,’ will be picked up, but she isn’t closing any doors to Wisteria Lane. PopEater caught up with Delany to chat about ‘Housewives,’ as well as the ‘Body’ pilot and her new movie, ‘Multiple Sarcasms’ with Timothy Hutton, where she gets the chance to act like a grownup while the men behave badly … quite the role reversal.

In ‘Multiple Sarcasms’ Timothy Hutton plays your hubby, who is going through a midlife crisis. That had to be a switch for you, allowing someone else to bring the crazy for once.
Yes, on ‘Desperate Housewives’ it is the women who behave more like children, and we’re the ones who are having the midlife crisis.

Timothy’s character in the movie is trying to find himself. Don’t you think it’s a pain for women to constantly deal with men who can’t just grow up?
It’s the classic thing that women constantly have to play the mommy. I don’t want to be in that role in a relationship. The minute I become someone’s mother in a relationship, it becomes so unsexy to me.
Why did you choose to do ‘Multiple Sarcasms’?
A lot of it had to do with Timothy. He called me and said there is a script you just have to read. I grew up in the seventies and this script has that kind of feel to it. It was a film about human beings that was both dramatic and funny.

What can we as concerned citizens do to eradicate this epidemic of toxic man-boy syndrome?
It is what happens in real life. I’m not a mother, but I would urge all mothers to raise their sons differently and tell them they need to take responsibility for their actions.

Your character Katherine has gone crazy on ‘Desperate Housewives’ and headed off to Paris with her lesbian stripper lover (that’s a mouthful). Is she gone for good? That will make us sad.
I just finished a new pilot for ABC, so I’m waiting to hear whether or not I’ll be doing my own show. It’s very different. Very different. I’d be playing a medical examiner. But there is always the opportunity of bringing Katherine back, and Mark Cherry has been really open to the idea. It would be great have her come back at some point as a changed person.

You play crazy so well on ‘Housewives.’ Is there a trick to getting crazy just right?
I do go looney toons. The trick is to keep is real. The danger would be playing to the snake pit, because then you lose the audience’s sympathy. The second you go too Joan Crawford they stop relating. I wanted women viewers to realize that any woman could be Katherine, given the circumstances.

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On TV, Dana Delany is well known for portraying a desperate housewife. In her new film, Multiple Sarcasms, she’s still playing a housewife, but her character, Annie, is far from desperate. In fact, she’s quite the opposite; sensible and strong.

Those traits come in handy because thanks to her husband’s midlife crisis, her marriage is unraveling. Gabriel was a skilled architect and loving family man, but now he’s entirely consumed by unwarranted sadness as well as his new obsession, writing a play. While Gabriel is busy searching for a new sense of self and toiling away at his typewriter, Annie is left to care for their daughter and try to hold the family together.

Not only was Delany on hand to enlighten us on her character in Multiple Sarcasms, but on her Desperate Housewives character as well. Constantly switching from TV to film is no easy task, but Delany has the details down to a science and is able to embrace the best of both worlds.

So tell us what you like about your character.
Oh gosh. I grew up in the ‘70s so I, first of all, loved that the whole movie had that feeling, that kind of ‘70s, Paul Mazursky movie. I remember An Unmarried Woman just had a huge impact on me when I was getting out of college. What I loved about the movie was a similarity in terms of the way Mazursky’s movies used to go from screaming to laughing to crying; it would take emotional left-turns all the time. So I think my favorite moment in the movie is when Tim [Hutton] and I are fighting and then I just start laughing. And I really fought for that because I thought this is what we do in life but we don’t see that in movies anymore.

How was it working with Brooks Branch as a first time director?
Obviously you don’t know going into it what it’s going to be like, and you are thinking, ‘Wow, he’s never made a movie before,’ but it was so relaxed. What I really like about Brooks and why we’ve remained friends is he’s very collaborative and he’s got a great sense of humor. He likes the messiness of life and I do too, so he accepts that things are odd or weird, and I like that. He mixes odd choices and he goes with it and I think it’s funny, it’s good, it’s human.

Since you’ve had your stint on Desperate Housewives, what do you look for now when it comes to projects? TV is such a huge commitment.
Whether I can fit it in my schedule. That’s the main thing right now. For instance, I think I’m really only going to get two weeks to myself this year. I’m not complaining, it’s been fantastic, but my agent keeps saying, ‘I want to find you a movie,’ and I keep saying, ‘No. No, I’m going on vacation. I’m taking two weeks and doing nothing.’ I think once all this TV stuff is done I’ll be back to it.

Different people have ways of contrasting the experience of doing TV and movies; how would you describe them for you?
Everything has its own tone. Desperate Housewives is such a beast unto itself. There’s nothing like it. I don’t even know how to describe it; that takes on a whole other life of its own. I feel like this movie is a little more real and smaller. It’s not so over the top. For me, every project, it’s finding the tone, which is hard.

It’s funny because your characters in this and that are so similar in ways, but the show and the movie are so drastically different. This was a problem you’d except to see on Desperate Housewives.
Yeah, but on Desperate Housewives it would have been about the woman having the midlife crisis. [Laughs] So that’s what’s nice about it, it’s about women because we often see the man having the midlife crisis.

Timeline wise, where did this film and starting Desperate Housewives fall?
I owe it all to Tim Hutton. We had just finished working together on Kidnapped and that got canceled, and then this came up and he suggested me to Brooks and I think I left two days later to start shooting. And then Desperate Housewives came up I think a month later.

Was this at all good preparation for that?
Was it? No, I don’t think so. [Laughs] No. Very different.

What do you like about your character, Katherine, on Housewives? Do you relate to her?
Oh god no. I always have to find something, but on the outside, no. I think I’ve been lucky on Housewives because I wasn’t one of the original four women and so because of that, my character is not so iconic. I get to do all the weird stuff that Marc Cherry wouldn’t let any of the other women do, like have a nervous breakdown, stab herself and become a lesbian. If that happened to any of the other women I think people would be very upset.

I imagine Desperate Housewives is heavily scripted as compared to this film. Did you get much freedom to improvise here?
Yes, which I loved. I would like to say, when I’m allowed to improvise, I don’t take it lightly and I know what a privilege that is, so I’m very serious about it and I think that I help when I do it. It’s not about me looking better; it’s about helping the story. Brooks was great with that.

You seem like a really self-possessed person who likes to get to know yourself. How does that affect your attitude towards the industry?
I think I’m at a place in my life now where I know none of it really matters, so I always remind myself of that. I don’t take anything personally. I feel like I’m on my own path, and whether that involves acting, great, if it doesn’t, fine, because there are so many other things I’m interested in – just living, traveling, being – that I have a certain healthy sense of detachment from all of it.

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Now, is this me reading too much into it or did Dana just confirm in her own way that Body Of Evidence – or whatever other title it gets in the end – is a complete go and so we’ll see her on her own show?!

In separate interviews recently conducted at Seattle’s Sorrento Hotel, actress Dana Delany and filmmaker Brooks Branch — star and director, respectively, of the drama-comedy “Multiple Sarcasms,” opening Friday — spoke with great fondness about Paul Mazursky’s 1978 Oscar-nominated “An Unmarried Woman.”

It was no coincidence. “Multiple Sarcasms,” starring Delany as the estranged wife of a would-be playwright (Timothy Hutton), is set in the late 1970s and shares more than a Manhattan backdrop with Mazursky’s hit vehicle for Jill Clayburgh. As with other relationship movies for real grown-ups from that era (Mazurksy’s “Blume In Love,” Alan J. Pakula’s “Starting Over,” Blake Edwards’ “10″), “Multiple Sarcasms” has little connection with today’s by-the-numbers, contemporary romantic comedies.

” ‘An Unmarried Woman’ had a huge effect on me,” says Delany, who moved to New York to begin a stage career in 1978. “It felt like real life. I love the messiness, the way relationships are captured, the way characters have to face themselves and figure out who they are. There’s no good guy and no bad guy in our film. It’s just sad.”

Hutton plays Gabriel, an architect whose midlife crisis is not so clear to the naked eye. Though good at his work, he spends weekday afternoons in movie theaters. He is loved by his beautiful family, has a couple of live-wire best pals (Mira Sorvino, Mario Van Peebles), yet is possessed by an inner disquiet. A friendship with a supportive theatrical agent (Stockard Channing) proves fortuitous, given his decision to map out his problems in a play.

As Gabriel writes, he realizes he has lived an ideal adulthood, yet has never caught up with who he was before adulthood really began.

“In most movies,” says Branch, “it’s easy to point to the cause of a problem. But in real life, cause and effect isn’t always obvious. Gabriel’s grateful for his life, but he hasn’t had the luxury to make decisions. That creates torment.”

Branch has a long background in the film business, though one unique to segueing into directing.

“I ran a creative division of licensing for Paramount,” he says. “I got burned out leveraging films for merchandising. I really was influenced by movies from the ’70s: ‘Harold and Maude,’ ‘Ordinary People.’ Films where the plot meanders a little in interesting ways.”

Though there is nothing visibly Pacific Northwest-like about “Multiple Sarcasms,” the film’s production was launched by a team of investors from Seattle, led by executive producers Patrice Auld, Martha Moseley and the late Keith Grinstein.

Auld, a longtime patron of Seattle arts, says she met Branch on a marketing project. Branch learned Auld had served as executive producer on “Expiration Date,” a 2006, prizewinning festival favorite by Seattle filmmaker Rick Stevenson, co-founder of TheFilmSchool. Auld sits on the board of that institution.

“I dabbled in film years ago,” says Auld. “Then I moved to Seattle, had a family and did nonprofit work. Then came ‘Expiration Date.’ It was a small way to get back in, feel creatively involved.”

Branch introduced his project to Auld, Grinstein and Moseley, and while the team raised “small amounts of money from a lot of investors,” says Auld, she worked with him on polishing the script. Later, she was involved in making a distribution deal, perhaps the toughest challenge these days for independent cinema.

“It’s a funny climate right now,” says Auld, who is currently working on a film written by Seattle-based actor Tom Skerritt. “There is a vibrant community here excited about supporting great scripts, but it’s hard to make money back.”

For Branch, the Seattle connection proved a far warmer experience than one typically hears about getting films made.

“I care about everyone who helped,” he says.

The cast of ABC’s ” Desperate Housewives” forgot about Russian gold diggers, stripper Robin’s adventures and the identity of the Fairview Strangler last week to focus on real life.

Dana Delany, who portrays Katherine on the show, is spokeswoman for the Child Hunger Ends Here Neighborhood Rally campaign, sponsored by the food company ConAgra and the hunger relief organization Feeding America. She and other cast members held a rally on the show’s set to publicize the effort to eradicate childhood hunger.

“No matter what the ladies go through on (Wisteria) Lane, they always come together at the end to help each other out,” Delany said by phone from California last week.

Delany talked about the problem of childhood hunger and several other topics (the interview was conducted before news broke about former “Housewives” actress Nicolette Sheridan’s lawsuit against show creator Marc Cherry and ABC, and we were unable to reach Delany for a follow-up question). First, we discussed dolphins.

Q: The first thing I have to ask: A recent magazine story said you swam with 400 dolphins.

A:Oh, that stupid article. Yes, yes I did. It was pretty amazing. I was visiting a friend in Hawaii and we decided to go swimming. She’s kind of a spiritual person and we went to swim with the dolphins, and it turned out they had all congregated at the end of the runway on the big island, of all places. Right next to the airport. It was great. They were very playful.

Q: You’ve been busy — “Desperate Housewives,” a TV pilot (“Body of Evidence”), a film (“Multiple Sarcasms,” coming out in May). We sometimes hear that Hollywood just wants fresh young faces, but for an actress who has — and I want to be very careful here — been around for a number of years, you seem to have no trouble finding work.

A: I feel very grateful. First of all, I love what I do, which I think makes a difference. I love to act. I don’t really care what the venue is as long as the writing’s good. And I do believe in the end it’s sort of a matter of the last man standing. If I just hang in there long enough I’ll keep working.

Q: Talk about Child Hunger Ends Here. How did you get involved?

A: They came to me. I don’t do anything unless I really research it and find out whether it’s worthy. When I was shooting the pilot in Rhode Island recently, I went to a food bank there that Feeding America has. And it’s really remarkable. They told me that last year Feeding America fed 37 million people in America. And they think because of the economy it’s going to be 50 million this year. That’s the scary thing, when parents can’t feed their kids. You hear stories about parents going hungry rather than their kids going hungry. It’s kind of this silent stalker that people don’t want to talk about because it’s embarrassing.

Q: When you take up a cause, do you ever worry about possibly alienating people? Some entertainers and athletes avoid taking a stand on anything. You seem fine with speaking your mind.

A: I have no problem with speaking my mind. I feel it’s my life and it’s going to be over soon, so I’d better be authentic.

Q: It’s going to be over soon?

A: You never know (laughs).

Q: Explain how people can help.

A: If people go to ChildHungerEndsHere.com, they can see … ways they can get involved. They can go to the Web site and get all the information to get a free package of stuff (so they can) host their own rally to raise money. Or they can go shopping.

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One question I often get asked is what makes for a good (and memorable) drama series. I’ve always believed that the heavily character-driven shows usually stand the best chance because viewers want to identify with one or more of the characters, they want to care and get invested in that character. In addition to the characters, I also believe that the shows that have defined a generation make for the most memorable of the bunch.

In a business where people seek the fountain of youth above all else, women from all walks of life were relieved when Desperate Housewives made it cool to be in your thirties, forties and fifties. Gone were the stereotypical housewives who “obey” their husbands and were barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

Three years ago, Katherine Mayfair arrived on Wisteria Lane to give the neighborhood a much-needed makeover. Her character has escaped an abusive husband, dated the neighborhood hottie, spent time in a mental institution and reexamined her sexuality by entering into a lesbian relationship with an ex-stripper.

Dana Delany, who plays Katherine on the hit series, became a household name back in the ’80s when she starred in the popular drama China Beach, and has kept us entertained ever since with that captivating and charismatic personality. I had the good fortune to speak with Dana about her days on China Beach, her role on Desperate Housewives, and a cause that is very close to her heart…

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