Dana Delaney interview

Another week, another bunch of murders and another chase to catch the culprit – we admit we’re a little bored of crime dramas. So what makes Body of Truth different? The series, which started last month in the US and debuts in the UAE this week, is set in Philadelphia and follows the same formula – but this time with a feisty female to keep your attention.

Dr Megan Hunt is a brainy but arrogant former neurosurgeon who winds up working for the police examining dead bodies. Critics have called her ‘Quincy with better legs’, although we think she’s more like
a headstrong career woman (think Alicia Florrick in The Good Wife), crossed with a forensic scientist (The X Files’ Dana Scully), with the surgical knowledge and bite of Christina Yang from Grey’s Anatomy.

The show stars former Desperate Housewives actress Dana Delany as Hunt, alongside Nicholas Bishop (who many people will know as Detective Peter Baker from Home & Away) as her sidekick Peter Dunlop. We caught up with Delany to find out what it’s like to be half of a crime-fighting duo.

Body of Proof is a hard-hitting drama. How much of a leap is it from Desperate Housewives?
It will be different. Housewives is the easiest job in the world because there are so many great actresses on it, and you only work two or three days a week. It’s so well-produced, and Body of Proof is a whole new gamble. It’s going to be a whole new thing – new writers, new cast, new character. I feel so lucky; I never thought at this stage in my life I’d still be offered new shows.

Your character, Megan, is a medical examiner. Tell us about her.
She’s a fun, very three-dimensional character; she’s very driven, very smart, and sardonic – kind of like a female House. She’s smarter than everyone else and she knows it, and she makes sure they know it too.

How hard has it been to remember all the medical terminology?
I heard from a doctor that when you go to medical school, you have to learn about 10,000 new words. Not only that, but the ones I’ve learned are so hard to say. I’m hoping I’ll get better at it. I have to say them really fast so it sounds like I know what I’m talking about. Apparently when George Clooney was in ER he would write the words on the bodies – I may end up having to do that myself.

You left Desperate Housewives very suddenly. Had you planned to stay on the show?
I was always going to stay on, but ABC offered me this new series. [Housewives creator] Marc Cherry said, ‘Hey, I don’t want to get in the way of you having your own show. If it doesn’t work out, you can come back’. It happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to digest it, and I was crying in the make-up trailer. Everyone was weeping because it was like, ‘Bye!’

So you could return to Housewives?
Even if it does all work out, maybe in the last season of Housewives my character, Katherine, will come back so we can wrap up what happened to her.
Body of Proof season one airs at 8pm every Tuesday from May 10 on OSN.