Entertainment

Cancer strikes ‘Housewives’

Desperate
House wives” is creating a cancer storyline for one of its longtime Wisteria Lane residents.

Kathryn Joosten, who plays busybody Karen McCluskey, will undergo treatment for lung cancer; the actress, 70, underwent treatment herself last year for the disease and made a complete recovery.

As in Joosten’s case, the story will have a happy ending.

Filming was under way today in LA for the first episode in the story arc, in which McCluskey announces that doctors have found a spot on one of her lungs. At the end of the episode, her boyfriend, Roy Bender, played by veteran New York theater actor Orson Bean, proposes. The two senior lovebirds pile into a car with Susan Mayer and Mike Delfino (Teri Hatcher and Jamie Denton) and drive off to get married.

Joosten, who has been with the show since 2005 and learned she was cancer-free this January, will work with staff writers to make sure the storyline dispenses correct information about the disease.