Drea De Matteo has insisted that she wasn’t hired for Desperate Housewives as a replacement for outgoing actress Nicollette Sheridan.

The former Joey star is playing Angie Bolen on the newest season of the show.

De Matteo told Stylist: “I think that had they tried to replace Edie, they would have gone for someone ten years younger and 30 million times hotter!”

On how she found working with the other Housewives, she said: “Eva [Longoria] told me that she and I had done a movie together, ages ago, and that she was an extra, but that was the only contact I’d had with anyone in the show.

“[But] they’ve been great. They’re an amazing group of ladies. And all the stories you have heard in the past, they are not true.”