Blair Underwood: Hardest Working Man in H'wood

Oct. 1, 2008 — -- A few years ago, actor Blair Underwood decided to take race off the table when it came to choosing which roles to play.

The decision does not appear to have hurt him. On the contrary, Underwood, who came to fame as a smooth-talking attorney on "L.A. Law," seemed to be one of the hardest working men in show business this year, with roles on three different networks.

Today (at 10 p.m. ET), he'll return as rival billionaire Simon Elder for the second season of ABC's "Dirty Sexy Money." Elder is not your typical black man, and Underwood likes it that way.

"In my last five or six roles -- "Sex and the City," "LAX," the film "Full Frontal," "In Treatment," "The New Adventures of Old Christine" and now "Dirty Sexy Money" -- part of the conversation I had with all those directors was 'If it's going to be about race, thank you, but no thanks,'" Underwood said during a chat at a New York City coffeehouse. "Because then you're limited to a producer's or studio's or network's perception of what my black experience is. Unless you can, in a two-hour film, delve into the real aspects of what it means to be an African-American man in America, I'd rather take it off the table. It forces the audience to deal with you as a man."

In "Sex and the City," "New Adventures" and "Full Frontal," Underwood played the lover to Cynthia Nixon, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Catherine Keener and Julia Roberts, respectively.

His role as an aggressive fighter pilot in "In Treatment" was a departure from his usual cocky charmers and nearly earned him an Emmy nomination (he was among the top 10 semi-finalists) -- and is now garnering Golden Globe buzz.

In "Dirty Sexy Money," Underwood's Elder is another departure. Considered the third richest man in the world, Elder is also the rival to the Darling family, the show's central characters.

"He is the villain, but he's not that guy twisting his mustache, cookie-cutter villain," Underwood said. "He's very multidimensional. As an actor, I love playing all those colors and shades."

Show creator Craig Wright, a playwright and former writer and producer of HBO's "Six Feet Under," said he wanted to create a character never before seen on television.