Gail O’Grady Says Her “Desperate Housewives” Slap by Felicity Huffman Was Real: ‘She Smacked Me in the Face, Like Full Force’
Gail O’Grady Says Her “Desperate Housewives” Slap by Felicity Huffman Was Real: ‘She Smacked Me in the Face, Like Full Force’
Virginia ChamleeMon, August 31, 2026 at 8:50 PM UTC
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Gail O’Grady, Felicity HuffmanCredit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic; Monica Schipper/Getty -
Gail O’Grady recalled being slapped full force by Felicity Huffman during a scene on Desperate Housewives
O’Grady played Anne Schilling, a character involved in an affair with a teenager on the hit ABC series
A stunt coordinator was present, but O’Grady said she still got hit despite rehearsing the scene carefully
Gail O’Grady is recounting her guest stint on Desperate Housewives, and a scene in which Felicity Huffman actually smacked her in the face.
O’Grady, 63, played recurring character Anne Schilling — an older woman involved in an affair with a teenager named Porter Scavo on the ABC series, which aired from 2004 to 2012.
Speaking in an episode of the Still Here Hollywood Podcast with Steve Kmetko, O’Grady, 63, said of Anne: “She was definitely a twisted character, which those characters are so much fun to play.”
Desperate HousewivesCredit: Danny Feld/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
O’Grady recounted one specific scene, in which her character is slapped in the face by Lynette Scavo (played by Felicity Huffman).
“If you remember the scene in the bathroom where Lynette confronts me about sleeping with her son,” O’Grady remembered, “when she hauled off to smack me in the face, she smacked me in the face. Like full force.”
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She continued: “Like, knocked me up against the wall. And when the director yelled cut, he goes, ‘Cut, Gail, are you okay?’ ”
“Whenever you do a fight scene or anything, there’s always a stunt coordinator on the set,” she added. “And so, the stunt coordinator worked with us and coordinated how I would turn my head and all of that. And I turned my head, but I got hit anyway.”
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Desperate Housewives centered on the lives, secrets and scandals of four suburban moms — Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher), Bree Van de Kamp (Marcia Cross), Lynette (Huffman), and Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) — living on a picture-perfect street called Wisteria Lane, and how their lives changed following the death of their friend Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong).
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
