Mildred "Boom-Boom" Turner Actress Gloria LeRoy Joining Desperate Houswives!

[Brian Damage]

The median age on Wisteria Lane is about to go through the roof.

Veteran character actress Gloria LeRoy is joining Desperate Housewives as a neighborhood fixture -- presumably a longtime one -- who we'll first meet next month, right around the time Nicollette Sheridan takes her last breath as Edie.

But a Housewives insider insists the 77-year-old thesp, who's probably best known for her scene-stealing work as Mildred "Boom-Boom" Turner on All in the Family, is not replacing Sheridan. Rather, my Wisterian mole teases, her character, Rose, "will figure into Edie's exit in a surprising way" — one that involves an increasingly cuckoo Orson, a violent act, and a touch of dementia. And not necessarily in that order.

In other Housewives casting news, Sarah Knowlton (Medium, House) has been tapped to play a woman who may or may not be having an affair with Tom.

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