Exclusive

Nicollette Sheridan's Desperate Housewives Death: Had Marc Cherry Been Plotting It for Months?

Story outlines exclusively obtained by E! News show that Edie Britt may have been doomed four months before Sheridan's alleged fight with her boss

By Natalie Finn, Baker Machado Mar 01, 2012 11:47 PMTags
E! Placeholder Image

Rome wasn't built in a day and Desperate Housewives' Edie Britt may not have been killed off overnight.

But while Nicollette Sheridan claims that series creator Marc Cherry and ABC decided to fire her after she claimed that Cherry had assaulted her on the set in September 2008, documents exclusively obtained by E! News suggest that Cherry was working on the ouster of Sheridan's character for months before the alleged incident took place.

Cherry's story outlines for the then-upcoming fifth season, dated May 14 and May 19, 2008, explicitly state that Sheridan's character, Edie, gets killed.

"Steven kills Edie, dumps the body on the Lane. Because of Edie's grand designs, everyone's a suspect (proceeded by an angry homeowner's association meeting)," reads the May 14 outline.

The May 19 notes state, "Moment where Steve misses his shot/medication. Kills Edie. Goes back on it."

That isn't , as Desperate Housewives fans well know, what ultimately happened to Edie: Her troubled husband (played by Neal McDonough) is actually named Dave, and after he tries to strangle her, she tries to get away in the car, swerves to avoid Orson in the street, crashes into a utility pole and is dispatched by a dangling electrical wire.

But Sheridan testified this morning that Cherry assured her as late as August 2008 that her character was safe and it wasn't until after their fight on Sept. 28—she claims Cherry smacked her in the head—that she felt her job was threatened.

When asked about the possibility that Edie's demise was storyboarded months before their altercation, Sheridan's attorney called Cherry's purported notes "baloney."