You play a cop in The Sentinel which is pretty far removed from Gabrielle on Desperate Housewives. Which character is closest to you in real life?
The cop. I grew up on a ranch in Texas and my dad was a hunter. He had me shooting target practice when I was six years old. He educated my sisters and I about guns, and we used to go target shooting all the time – we’d shoot beer cans, coffee cans, anything that exploded and made noise. So I felt totally at home as a Secret Service agent. In fact, most of my work before Desperate Housewives consisted of cop roles [in short-lived TV-series like LA Dragnet].
Still, you’re not exactly a macho girl!
No, I love being a woman. I love shopping and wearing dresses and heels and jewellery. I love being sexy and feeling sexy.
You wear some awesome lingerie on Desperate Housewives; do you enjoy trotting about in your skimpies?
It’s nerve-racking! I’m constantly going, “Are you shooting from up here or here? Where’s the camera again?” I didn’t realise how much lingerie I’d be in and how much time I’d spend in the bathtub. I actually had to talk to the director and go, “Can you please stop putting me in the bathtub?”
Really? But we like it…
It’s just a pain in the butt to shoot. You’re naked and they just fill it up with bubbles and basically they put body make-up on you so you look beautifully tanned with flawless skin and then it just comes off in the water so you’re sitting in this brown water all day. There have been times when they do all the tub scenes in one day, so I go out and in comes Ricardo, then in comes Jesse. I’m like, “Guys, can we space out the tub scenes?”
So you’re going to be in the bath less?
Yes.
And no more lingerie?
That was my request. And now that my character is pregnant nobody wants to see that.
Heidi Klum does it…
Well, that’s Heidi Klum. She’s a supermodel.
Are you tired of being typecast as sexy?
No, I’m going with sexy for as long as it will take me. Women have an expiry date in this business.