The keys to Carrie Bradshaw’s rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan were almost in the hands of “Desperate Housewives” actor Dana Delany. Delany was offered the role by “Sex and the City” creator Darren Starr, and spoiler alert: She turned it down. It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Sarah Jessica Parker fitting into Bradshaw’s Louboutins, but Starr’s rationale for asking Delany isn’t flawed. The roles Delany played in the ’90s were very similar to the kind of character Carrie Bradshaw was written to be.
However, it was the prospect of typecasting that compelled Delany to reject Bradshaw’s storyline. “Darren Star was a friend of mine and he had joined up with Candace Bushnell and came up with this idea and he asked if I’d be in it,” she told the L.A.Times. “It was very much in the early stages, and I had just done ‘Nude Girls’ and ‘Exit to Eden’ and I just said to Darren, ‘I cannot do a show with ‘sex’ in the title.’ People will lynch me if I do one more thing about sex.”
Delany also turned down a Desperate Housewives role
While she turned down an iconic role, she did find herself playing a part in another hit TV show. Delany was stunning as Katherine Mayfair, who will forever be the desperate housewife who adopted a girl to pass off as her own daughter after her daughter’s accidental death (via YouTube). Before she played Katherine, however, Delany was offered the starring role of Bree Van De Kamp.
“Marc had offered me the role of Bree, but I had just done ‘Pasadena’ and I thought the role was too similar to that and I don’t really like to repeat myself. I’ve never ever been in this for the money. I just like to do what challenges me,” she told the L.A. Times.
Katherine Mayfair does go on to become Bree’s rival in the realm of housekeeping, but Delany also told VH1 that she saw the two on a different story arc, “I really thought that Bree and Katherine should be together. I really did. I felt like they were two sides of the same coin and there was a lot of shipping going on about those two and I think it would of worked. I think it would of been one of those relationships with women in their older years going ‘Oh it was you all along!’ Why not?”
While Delany didn’t take these infamous roles, she did avoid being typecast, becoming a neurosurgeon on “Body of Proof” (via Deadline), and a Colonel in “The Code” (via Deadline).
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