Former ABC Primetime Star Reveals He Was Fired

Jesse Metcalfe’s time on Wisteria Lane came to an unceremonious end after the actor says he was “fired” from Desperate Housewives.

Metcalfe’s character, gardener John Rowland, had an affair with Eva Longoria’s housewife character, Gaby Solis, in the first season of the ABC drama. Despite cementing him as a sex symbol, Metcalfe revealed in a recent appearance on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast that the character didn’t have much room for growth as far as the higher-ups were concerned.

“I was fired from Desperate Housewives,” Metcalfe, 47, said. “After the first season, they didn’t really know where else to take my storyline.”

He continued: “Our creator, Marc Cherry, was kind of like, ‘Hey, this isn’t Desperate House-gardeners. This is Desperate Housewives. So, unfortunately, you know, you’re not gonna be a series regular moving forward on the show. We’re gonna bring you back intermittently.”

At the time, Metcalfe said he had been offered the titular role of John Tucker in the 2006 comedy John Tucker Must Die, “So I was like, ‘Hey, cool, no big deal, I’m gonna be a movie star.’”

“I wasn’t hit super hard by like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m being fired from a mega-hit show,’” he continued. “I took it in stride because I thought, ‘This is only the beginning.’”

Metcalfe has also spoken out in previous years about the “pressure” he felt to keep up his shredded physique after breaking out on Desperate Housewives, telling Vice‘s i-D Magazine in 2021, “Being a sex symbol is very much about the roles that you play and my roles put me up on a pedestal.”

“But my appearance was also criticized and picked apart by a lot of people in the media. Having your shirt off in every episode of Housewives brought a lot of pressure,” he continued, adding, “You have to stay in the best shape you can and then between projects, everyone expects you to stay in that shape 24/7, 365. That’s not realistic. That’s why paparazzi catch actors between projects looking ‘out of shape’ — they’re taking time off and that includes the gym.”