Many Desperate Housewives fans are still mourning the death of Mike Delfino, 12 years later. But for actor James Denton, getting shot “was a lot of fun.”
In a recent interview with PEOPLE, the actor, 61, shares his favorite episodes from the ABC comedy drama in which he played Mike, Susan Mayer’s (Teri Hatcher) partner in the series.
“The one where I got shot,” he immediately calls out as an episode highlight. “It’s always fun to get chills on camera.”
The actor also recounts the behind-the-scenes of filming the beloved character’s death in season 8, episode 16 via a drive-by shooting in front of his fictional home on Wisteria Lane. Crucial to the death scene were special effects and a tubing rig to emulate blood.
“You have one tube up one leg of your pants that has the blood to your chest, and you have a wire running down the other leg. This guy is out in the bushes with a detonator to set the blast off,” Denton explains. “And you can only do it about two or three times and that’s the whole day.”
There were, of course, a lot of emotions that accompanied filming Delfino’s final moments alongside his costar, Hatcher. In the scene, Mike pushes Susan out of the way, taking a loan shark’s bullet and saving her life.
“Teri was so brilliant in that scene,” Denton tells PEOPLE. “I was lying in her lap, you know, bleeding out from the big crane shot up above. It was before there were drones, obviously. She’s just sobbing uncontrollably. And she did it all day long. And it was so hard for me not to break up and cry because she was so heartbreaking.”
Mike’s survival until the series’ final season was a feat, especially considering that countless characters were killed off during the show’s run. “It was a lot of death,” Denton says.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
“The guys joked the entire run, ‘Who was gonna get killed,’ you know, because for all of the talk about Housewives being so salacious, there wasn’t that much sex — but there was a lot of murder,” Denton tells PEOPLE. “We killed 56 characters.”
Though the actors didn’t receive full scripts toward the end of Desperate Housewives‘ final season to avoid spoilers, Denton says he was still consulted about Mike’s murder by the drama’s producer, Marc Cherry.
“[We] were always joking about who was gonna be the last man standing,” Denton recounts. ” ‘Can we just survive another season?’ [Then] they actually called me in to talk about killing Delfino off — which I thought was very respectful of them — and said, ‘We wanna do something big before the finale that doesn’t involve the women.’ ”
Mike’s ending felt like a “big send-off,” Denton tells PEOPLE, and he was “very happy with that.”
To this day, Denton says fans still approach him to confess their sadness over his character’s sudden death.
“I love that people are really sweet, almost everyone I talk to comments on the fact that they cried when Delfino got shot, but it was set up brilliantly by the writer Matt Berry and Marc,” he says, laughing. “[They] really set up people emotionally, which is not very fair.”
Desperate Housewives is now streaming in its entirety on Hulu.
Read the full article here
