New York, April 25-30 – After Felicity Huffman’s transsexual turn during the Tribeca Film Festival, her Desperate Housewives costar Teri Hatcher took over lower Manhattan as a festival juror. We first ran into Teri at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, where she thrilled minority filmmakers by attending an awards ceremony, and stayed for several hours at the party in the hotel bar. The 40-year-old Hatcher outlasted us, first chatting with festival founder Jane Rosenthal, and then settling into a large corner booth with a female friend, where we left her after two hours. This was Thursday, April 28th, the night that Teri ended up partying until the wee hours and was photographed leaving a nightclub with a younger man. She definitely was not with the guy at the Tribeca Grand, unless he joined her there after we left near midnight.

Bright and early Saturday morning, we met Hatcher again at the Tribeca Grand, where she participated in a Vanity Fair panel discussion with Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman, who was quite taken with the Wisteria Lane beauty. Teri was a funny and forthcoming panelist, despite the fact that that very morning the aforementioned photo of her with the mystery man was splayed on the front page of the New York Post. She did not allude to the incident at all, but did mention that she was starving when she flew into town late at night, and walked over to Spice Market for a bite, inadvertently explaining a previously reported tabloid item.

But only the gossip was about Teri; the week was about film. Everyone was bragging that they’d met Columbo when Peter Falk and Paul Reiser hosted their movie The Thing About My Folks. We also ran into accomplished folks like Nick Nolte, Liam Neeson, Tim Robbins and Sir Ian McKellen.