Mary Alice Young
| Mary Alice Young | |||||
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| Desperate Housewives character | |||||
| Portrayed by | Brenda Strong | ||||
| Duration | 2004–12 | ||||
| First appearance | "Pilot" 1x01, October 3, 2004 |
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| Last appearance | "Finishing the Hat" 8x23, May 13, 2012 |
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| Created by | Marc Cherry | ||||
| Profile | |||||
| Other names | Angela Forrest | ||||
| Occupation | Housewife Nurse President of the Homeowners Association |
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| Residence |
4352 Wisteria Lane, Fairview, Eagle State (14 years before season 1) Salt Lake City, Utah (before moved to Eagle State) |
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| Spouse | Paul Young |
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| Children | Zach Young (adopted son) |
Mary Alice Young is a fictional character from the ABC television series Desperate Housewives. The character is portrayed by Brenda Strong, who also narrates the series from beyond the grave; the character's suicide in the pilot episode served as the catalyst of the series. The narration provided by Mary Alice is essential to the tale of Wisteria Lane, as the series revolves around her sharing the secrets of her friends and neighbors. Her narration technique is akin in style to Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology.
Mary Alice is the most mysterious of the housewives as only parts of her story are known. A loving, doting wife and mother who was generous to her family and neighbours, she was the last person any of them expected to commit suicide. In death, Mary Alice sees things she would not have seen in life: her friends' vulnerabilities, lies and secrets. She does not judge them so much as love them more because of their foibles, pitying them for the ways they manipulate and hurt those they care about most. Although deceased since the pilot episode, Mary Alice continued to have a leading storyline throughout the first and second seasons of the series, with the story being led by her husband Paul (Mark Moses) and son Zach Young (Cody Kasch). Strong was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for her narration as Mary Alice.
The role of Mary Alice was originally given to Sheryl Lee. A pilot was filmed including Lee, but Brenda Strong eventually took over the role, as producers thought that Lee was not right for the part. Strong commented on the casting change for her character, explaining, "I think it was a conceptual shift ... There certainly wasn't something wrong with what [Lee] did. It was just that instead of vanilla they wanted chocolate, and I happened to be chocolate." Scenes featuring Lee were refilmed with Strong as her replacement. The mystery surrounding Mary Alice and her family was the main storyline in the first season of the series, and it is resolved in the first season finale. Series creator Marc Cherry had wanted there to be a "definite end" to the mystery, hoping to avoid similar viewer fatigue that Twin Peaks suffered after drawing out its central mystery past its first season. ABC executives initially protested the writers' decision to have Mary Alice purposefully kill Deirdre Taylor, prompting the writers to make Deirdre violent in order to justify Mary Alice's actions.
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