Cherry: 'Housewives' death came before head 'tap'

Cherry"Desperate Housewives" creator Marc Cherry testified on Monday that he got approval in May 2008 from Touchstone and ABC to kill off Nicollette Sheridan's character from the show, months before he and Sheridan got into a confrontation over a script. Cherry's testimony in Sheridan's wrongful termination suit is what his legal team has said proves that he planned to drop her from the series before their dispute, and not in retaliation for her complaints about the incident. Sheridan says Cherry hit her on the head in September of that year, after she queried him on why one of her lines was cut. She filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court in 2010. Cherry said that in a short meeting with Touchstone's Mark Pedowitz on May 22, 2008, he got the greenlight to kill Edie Britt off at the end of the 2008-09 season, the show's fifth, and that ABC's Steve McPherson also gave the go ahead, with the extra benefit that they could heavily promote the episode. At the time, Cherry said, the network had been concerned about costs, and this was a way to trim show salaries. Sheridan made $175,000 per episode in her final year with the series. Sheridan's attorney, Mark Baute, repeatedly asked Cherry whether there was any written evidence such as e-mails or other documents that showed he had long planned to kill off the character, but Cherry said there was not. He did say that as the show's writers got back together following the 2008 hiatus, he informed them that he planned to do so, but asked them to keep it a secret. Cherry said creative issues and costs were reasons for cutting Sheridan out of the show, and also the actress's own "professional behavior." He cited punctuality, forgetting lines, being "nasty" to a propman, and being critical of scripts and of a costar. "It wasn't the primary reason for my decision" to write Sheridan out, but "it was something I was aware of," Cherry said. Pressed whether Cherry kept written records of Sheridan's professional behavior, he said he did not, but that it was "on my mind" when cutting her from the cast. Even though Cherry decided to kill her off in May 2009, Touchstone in June 2008 picked up an option to extend her contract on the show through the fifth season, costing about $4 million. The savings, Cherry said, would come in the sixth season. "As the series went down in ratings," he said there was "pressure to reduce costs." Cherry disputes what happened in the September 2008 dispute. She said that he "hit" her, but Cherry said on Monday, "I tapped her on the head." Earlier in the day, as she ended her testimony, Sheridan said she was informed in February 2009 in a meeting with Cherry that her character would be killed off. The day after, she met one of the show's producers, Jeff Greenstein, for dinner and he told her he had "just learned of the decision" and that he was "shocked and couldn't believe the decision had been made." She got tearful on the stand as she read a letter that another producer, George Perkins, sent to her after she did a table read for her final episode. "Your grace, dignity and class shined as the brightest light in the room," she read from the letter. Contact Ted Johnson at ted.johnson@variety.com