BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — If at first Dana Delany won't be on "Desperate Housewives," try, try again. And again.

Then wait three years and try again.

Delany was the first choice to play Bree when "Housewives" creator/executive producer Marc Cherry was casting the show three years ago.

"She told me, 'This character's just like my mother.' Which made me laugh because I based it on my mother," Cherry said. "And my mother, although she's kind of a very sweet homemaker, she had kind of a sly sense of humor. And that's how Dana performed it."

After a "fantastic audition, I offered her the part three times. She turned it down three times," Cherry said.

"I just had other things that I wanted to do," Delany said. "I had just finished something, and I didn't want to go back into a series."

So Cherry went with his second choice, Marcia Cross.

"And the reason Marcia was my second choice was ... she played Bree kind of oblivious. Her Bree didn't get the joke," Cherry said. "Her Bree was kind of oblivious to her own Bree-ness."

Which is the way Cherry decided to write Bree. "And it became, in a way, a much funnier character than I had originally envisioned."

Then, as he approached the upcoming fourth season, Cherry had in mind a character who was more in line with his original vision of Bree.

"When this character came along, I went, 'You know what? Let me take another shot at Dana.' So I came back begging, and I think there were some threats involved," Cherry said. "And we lucked out and we got Dana."

Delany's character, Katherine, moves back to Wisteria Lane in the season-opener on Sunday, Sept. 30. She used to live there 12 years ago, and she was friends with Mary Alice (Brenda Strong) and Susan (Teri Hatcher). But Katherine "left mysteriously," and she's returns her 17-year-old daughter and a much-younger husband (Nathan Fillion).

Katherine "is very much an alpha female who goes up against all our women, especially Bree," Cherry said. "And very soon, the women figure out that there's something surprisingly creepy about this family. Susan realizes that something has definitely changed about this woman and her daughter."

As for Katherine's young husband, Adam, "I think it takes a strong man to be with a strong woman," Fillion said.

Turns out his character is a gynecologist. As a matter of fact, Susan is going to discover that her new gynecologist is also her new next-door neighbor.

(Susan does tend to end up in this sort of situation, doesn't she?)

This season's Big Mystery will involve the new neighbors, but Cherry promised it won't be all about gloom.

"Both of them have a comedic point of view as well as secrets," he said of the new characters, who are "going to be around for a while."