Felicity Huffman: Killer Housewife.

The former Desperate Housewives star — who was pursued by multiple networks this development season — has inked a deal to headline Boomerang, Fox’s drama pilot about a family of hired guns, TVLine has learned.

The project, from ER and Shameless vet John Wells, focuses on the usual, everyday drama surrounding a family business — except this family is in the business of executing hits as assassins for the U.S. government.

Huffman will play the clan’s matriarch Margie Hamilton, a briskly professional assassin who can kill and dispose of a suspected terrorist in the afternoon — then switch to wife and mother mode without a hitch.

Davey Holmes (Pushing Daisies, Awake) penned the script and Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow) is set to direct. Both will also serve as EPs alongside Wells and Andrew Stearn (Shameless).

Boomerang marks Huffman’s first major TV endeavor since Housewives came to an end last year.

TVLine

A HUGE congratulations to Felicity! We’re all incredibly excited about this project and cannot wait to see it.

Eight months after wrapping up the shenanigans on Wisteria Lane, Desperate Housewives executive producers Marc Cherry and Sabrina Wind are in Atlanta shooting their new soap, Devious Maids.

Like its predecessor, the Beverly Hills-set series (premiering later this year on Lifetime) juggles a delicious mix of comedy and tragedy. “It absolutely has the same tone as Housewives,” says Wind. “It’s five really interesting women, who, like us all, have certain things they don’t want everyone to know.”

After one of their own is murdered at the start of the series, the maids work together “to make sure the murderer is discovered and retribution is paid,” Wind says. “You will find out who the murderer is before the first season is completed.”

In the above photo, the women — (from left) Carmen (Roselyn Sánchez), Rosie (Dania Ramirez), Zoila (Judy Reyes) and Marisol (Ana Ortiz) —”are on a break at the home of a rock star who is on tour.” Wind says. “When surrounded by luxuries, sometimes you just have to enjoy them.”

Also during the 13-episode season, viewers will be taken inside lavish galas at the opulent homes of the maids’ bosses, who include a soap opera actor, a movie star and a lawyer. “In one episode, we see an employer follow a maid home to her less affluent neighborhood to see how the other half lives,” says Wind. “And at the end of the season, there will be one very large gathering that everyone will be a part of where secrets will be revealed.”

Via TVGuide.

I’d been getting some questions about Devious Maids so occasionally I’ll post news here. I have no intentions on making it a focus here at DFO, nor do I plan on doing a site for the show. Over the last 8 years I’ve done 3 successful fan websites for television shows and and I am quite happy with that number and notches on my belt.

Brenda Strong received her second consecutive Emmy nomination Thursday (July 19) for her work on “Desperate Housewives,” and since the show has now ended, she says it’s “bittersweet.”

“More sweet than bitter, for sure,” Strong, who now stars on TNT’s “Dallas,” tells Zap2it of her nomination for outstanding voice-over performance for narrating the long-running ABC series. “Had I been honored in the beginning, the first two years, it wouldn’t be the same. Having it come at the end makes it feel so much more important and special, because I know it’s over.”

She’s also thrilled that her co-star Kathryn Joosten, who died in June, was nominated a final time. Joosten won two guest-acting Emmys on “Desperate Housewives” but got her first nomination in the supporting actress category on Thursday.

“She was so special,” Strong says of Joosten. “… She loved her work so much — that was her driving force. She loved being an actress. [During filming of the series finale] we were hugging, and she looked at me and said, ‘Will you vote for me?’ I said, ‘Kathy, of course I’ll vote for you.’”

Strong appeared on-camera as Mary Alice Young in the “Desperate Housewives” finale in addition to narrating, and she was on set when the final scene filmed. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” she says. “We all sat around the kitchen table with [creator] Marc [Cherry] and reminisced. It was very special.”

The voice-over Emmy is part of the Creative Arts ceremony on Sept. 15; the Primetime Emmys will air on ABC on Sept. 23.

Congratulations Brenda! I know that all of this Housewives Emmy love has been making me all weepy.

Zap2It

The late, great Kathryn Joosten a received well-deserved posthumous Emmy nomination this morning, and if that doesn’t make your eyes mist up, then the statement her rep released in Joosten’s honor definitely will.

“I know she was smiling down on Hollywood this morning. I was up early to hear them and after I saw her name I broke down and was so full of joy for her and sadness that I couldn’t reach out and call her this morning,” publicist Nadine Jolson told E! News. “I do know that she was extremely proud of the work she did on Housewives this season. And It was quite brave of her to take on the storyline of her character’s losing battle with lung cancer and so terribly sad for her to lose her own battle just three weeks later.”

Joosten, who passed away on June 2 after a long battle with the disease, got a nod in the Outstanding Guest Actress in Comedy category—a category in which she twice won before. And if you saw her moving death scene on the Desperate Housewives series finale, then of course you are not surprised at all by this nomination.

E!Online