Are you a desperate fan of Desperate Housewives?

Say, you’re a great fan of Desperate Housewives, the hit TV series that has captured fans from all over the world, the Philippines included.

You have religiously followed the travails of the Wisteria Lane ladies for the past four years and have come to identify with one of the characters on the show.

Some of you may be rooting for an Edie in yourself, the neighborhood villainess who tries to bed every man within lurking distance. Or, you may be secretly a Bree, the perfect-wife who is battling her own family secrets. There is Susan, of course, the single mom whose love affair with the neighborhood’s sexy plumber, Mike Delfino, takes four years to realize only to be threatened yet again.

Not so few of you would secretly trade-in your personal lives to become Gabby, the former model who marries a handsome stockbroker, takes on an affair with the hunky gardener and seems to get everything right all the time — even marrying the city mayor! And then there’s Lynette of course, the former corporate executive, now a stay-home mom who has to take care of a rowdy bunch of kids, an illegitimate daughter and cancer, and still be the moral strength of the group.

So you’re a fan.

Now, put yourself in a room with Felicity Huffman, Teri Hatcher, Eva Longoria-Parker, Marcia Cross, Nicollette Sheridan and Dana Delaney.

Two weeks ago, The Philippine Star was the only Philippine-based newspaper to cover the Summer 2008 Press Tour organized by Disney-ABC Television Group.

Held at the fabulous Beverly Hilton Hotel, the same hotel where the annual Golden Globes are held, the beautiful and sexy cast of Desperate Housewives  spent an hour with the press to talk about their show, their characters, the forthcoming fifth season (with the much-heralded five-year jump) and how the past four years of doing the series have affected their lives.

The fourth season ended with a lot of revelations and hints as to how the five-year narrative jump would shape the characters and the storylines.

There were hints of Edie finally leaving Wisteria Lane, “He tries to kill Edie every year,” Sheridan said. But that may not be true. “She’s like a bad boomerang. She just keeps coming back,” assured Marc Cherry, the writer-producer of the series.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Sheridan wickedly added.

Longoria-Parker’s Gabby is also headed to a major switch. “When I found out, I was excited because I felt it was a reset button and we got to really start from scratch and explore more things for my character,” she said. “To play something more  than glamour is going to be fun for me.”

Longoria-Parker’s character will have two grown-children in the forthcoming season and she will still be married to Carlos Solis, well, we will never know, actually. “But yeah, I have butt pads and stomach pads and boob pads,” she added.

“That’s what I told them, that it was a chance for us to reset,” Cherry explained. “You know, the soap tends to build up and I wanted to get back to where we were that very first season, where it’s just the problems of some ordinary women and they were small and relatable.”

“I was thrilled because she’s going to get out of the house with her muffins!” Cross said of her character Bree.

“That’s going to be the name of her autobiography, “Out of the House with my Muffins.” Huffman, who plays Lynette, teased.

“I think it’s as it is in life, you know, growth is inevitable,” Cross added. “I just thought it would be great for her to get out and get into the world and out of, you know, the domestic problems.”

In the forthcoming season, Bree will see herself becoming a Martha Stewart-like media-personality while her gay son, Andrew, will evolve into an events organizer.

Hatcher’s Susan will have a new man in her life. Gale Harold, who is famous for portraying the insecure playboy Brian in the hit Showtime series Queer as Folk, joins the cast as Susan’s new love interest.

“Susan was the romantic comedy character. The other women’s problems were always. ‘I’m in this life, and I’m miserable. I’m desperate. How do I solve these problems?’ and Susan from the very start was always ‘I want back into the fairy tale,’” Cherry said.

“I think I am struggling with it because I think the five-year jump is allowing her to have more strength than we’ve seen,” Hatcher added. She also confided that she feels sad that the actress portraying her daughter in the show will go and will only come back in a few episodes in the fifth season.

“She’s just amazing. She was literally like 12 and turned 13 when we shot the pilot, and then you know 18 when she left,” Hatcher said. “I care about her a lot. She’s tremendously talented.”

Huffman is also sad to see her on-screen children go. Her character, Lynette, will stay married to Tom but will have teenage children to tackle now.

“The strength of Lynette comes forth in the action of it. Marc has placed her like a lot of women in the world, struggling at the beginning with having a family and how difficult children are and then having a career and having a career,” Huffman said. “Now, he’s put her with teenagers. I don’t have teenagers, but what I understand is they need almost more parenting and less at the same time, and so that’s the dilemma I’m sure a lot of people are with.”

While Delaney is just happy “to have my secrets out,” she, Cherry promised, will continue to have a twisted rivalry with Cross’ Bree.

Now that the secrets of the forthcoming season are spilled, would you still want to be your favorite character?

Desperate Housewives airs Thursdays on Studio 23.