Desperate Housewives alum James Denton opened up about raising his family outside of Los Angeles.
“It's nothing against L.A. … It is what it is. There's a lot of good, a lot of bad,” Denton, 63, said. Fox News Digital in an interview published Monday, June 29. “It's not a good place to raise children.”
The actor and his wife, Erin O'Brien, lived in the LA area during the run of Desperate Housewives but they later moved to Minnesota to raise their two children, a son Sheppard23, and a daughter Malin21. (Denton is back in LA with his wife.)
In a recent interview, Denton said that being outside the Hollywood bubble allowed her to “look at the impact on social media and the desire to keep up with other people” without it affecting her family.
“Whether it's plastic surgery or nails or hair or all that,” she said. “It's very interesting to me and something my daughter hasn't experienced in the Midwest to that extent. So that was fun to see. Wow, a different culture for kids.”
Denton continued, “The other parents handled it well and did a great job. But I thought it was easy to get out of it. And we had a good reason with the whole family there. But, LA is a strong place because of that, I think, image emphasis, which is really hard to escape from LA.”
I The Good Witch The star revealed that he knows a lot of “cool” kids who grew up in Hollywood — he just felt the Midwest was “a better place [his own kids] growth.”
“Their mom and I were like, 'Look, his whole family was up in Minnesota, a great place to raise kids, in the Midwest, great public schools, let's get them out to LA. Let them grow up somewhere healthy and I'll figure it out,'” he recalled. “And there's a good role model, caring, whatever. I got a job right away at the Hallmark Channel in Toronto. So I was only two hours away and I flew home every weekend.”
When the Dentons moved to Minnesota, he told the Dentons Twin Cities Pioneer Press that it was important for his two children to grow up close to his wife.
James Denton
Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images for Hallmark Media“Our kids are growing up with their cousins and grandparents,” Denton said in 2015. “And we got ourselves out of LA, so it's all good.”
Denton previously revealed that he was very uncomfortable playing hunky plumber Mike Delfino Desperate Housewives back in the day. (He starred on the hit ABC show for eight seasons, during which Mike married neighbor Susan Mayer, played by Teri Hatcher(not only once but a second time after the couple broke up.)
“I was never good at it, I spent a lot of time playing the wrong people until then Housewives,” he admitted to the Australian The Morning Show in March 2021. “I was never hunky. I was happy to be there, don't get me wrong, but I was uncomfortable. It's been following me forever, that shirtless gun in the front yard.”
He added, “I had a hard time being seen in anything that was a suit and tie role or maybe a politician. Housewives. But you will never hear me complain.”
Desperate Housewives aired on ABC from 2004 to 2013.
