Pill-pushing will never be the same
NEW YORK—
He’s pretty creepy, with his simpering smile, embarrassed manner and dead brown eyes. George Williams is the sort of guy you’re glad to be separated from by a drugstore counter. But nothing, so far, can separate George from Bree Van De Camp, the red-haired homemaker of Desperate Housewives.
Certainly not her husband Rex: George offed him last season by tampering with his heart medication. Or Bree’s therapist, who cautioned the new widow about accepting a marriage proposal from George: he heaved the therapist from a bridge.
Played by Roger Bart, George thus far has covered his tracks as a murderous swain. But things are likely to come to a head this Sunday ( 9 p. m. on CTV).
“ Nobody in their right mind would say, ‘ Hmmm, what a great guy,’ ” Bart says. “ He’s not your average sociopath. But I’ve tried to find things in him that a viewer can identify with . . . I made the choice that he’s very, very angry about something. People can relate to that.”
“ I’ve been working for 20 years,” says the 43- year- old actor, whose stage roles include a Tony- winning run as Snoopy in the 1999 revival of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
and the outrageous, catsuit-clad Carmen Ghia, which he originated in Mel Brooks’s hit musical comedy, The Producers.
“ There was one scene early on where George is home alone, eating dinner and watching Bree on the surveillance video from the drugstore. I think that’s when America went, ‘ Uhoh.’ ” And maybe when people got hooked. Even amid the show’s brawny males and attractive women, this desperate boyfriend is Desperate Housewives’ most distinctive personality. No wonder Bart was kept on for more episodes last season, which made his life nicely complicated: while playing the icky apothecary, back in New York he was shooting the film version of The Producers
(which opens Dec. 16). A never- married father of two daughters, Bart is savouring his current success — including bittersweet moments, such as when Rex died shockingly on last season’s finale.
“ Shooting my scenes, I hadn’t really even known what I was putting in his medicine,” says Bart. “ But after Steven Culp had shot his final scene, he called to tell me: ‘ Keep your mouth shut, but I’m dead. You did it!’
“ Then, when it aired, I watched that episode, watching him in the hospital croaking his last breath, and I found myself moved almost to tears by his death. I was misting up and going, ‘ Who would do such a horrible thing?’ And then I had to say, ‘ Wait a minute! I did it!’ ”