Blair Underwood on Longlegs, saying no to Sex And The City at first, and how L.A. Law changed his life

The actor: Blair Underwood started his career in the theater before managing to score his first on-camera gig immediately after leaving college and moving to New York, and given that the gig in question was a role on The Cosby Show when the sitcom was at the height of its popularity, it’s no wonder that it set him on the path to success. In short order, Underwood secured his first leading role in a film (Krush Groove), which was followed by his first series-regular role (Downtown), and while the latter didn’t last terribly long, it was a stepping stone to the series that would cement him firmly in the public eye: L.A. Law.

After spending seven years playing Los Angeles attorney Jonathan Rollins, Underwood went straight into a major motion picture with one of the world’s most famous actors—Just Cause, starring Sean Connery—and he’s rarely stepped away from the camera since… except for 2014, but we’ll get to that. What’s important is that Underwood is currently starring in one of the summer’s biggest hits (Longlegs), and he’s got a new series coming out in the fall (Three Women), so combining those two projects with a 40-year back catalog, he had plenty to discuss with The A.V. Club during the course of a lengthy, freewheeling interview.

Longlegs (2024)—“Agent Carter”

The A.V. Club: I wish I’d been able to see Longlegs before we talked, because the trailer looks absolutely terrifying.

Blair Underwood: Oh, you haven’t seen it yet! Well, it’s a good one. It’s scary! 

AVC: How did you find your way into the film? Did they reach out to you?

BU: Yeah! Well, my agent just set up a Zoom call with Oz Perkins, the director, so we had a great conversation, just hit it off from the very beginning. They told me all about the character and the role and the story. And at the time, the final scene wasn’t written. You haven’t seen it yet, so I won’t give it away, but it gave me something more to play with and sink my teeth into, which was a lot of fun to do. But I’ve got to tell you, I’m so excited about this role because I’ve never really done a horror film! I mean, I’ve done psychological thrillers. There was Just Cause with Sean Connery, and Asunder, but this is a different, darker genre, which was fun to be a part of.

AVC: What can you tell me—that isn’t a spoiler—about Agent Carter?

BU: So Agent Carter is kind of a by-the-books FBI agent. He’s the boss of the protagonist, who is played by Maika Monroe and who’s not unlike Jodie Foster’s character in Silence Of The Lambs. So I’m her boss, and… he’s a loving family man and trying to take care of his family and find the serial killer, played by Nicolas Cage.

AVC: The way that they pointedly avoid showing Nicolas Cage in the trailer is impressive restraint.

BU: Yeah, none of the trailers show him. Which is great! I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but they now have a billboard up in L.A. that’s just a phone number and Nicolas Cage’s eye and the date it opens, 7/12. And if you call that phone number, you hear his voice… and it’s eerie as hell!

The Cosby Show (1985)—“Denise’s Friend” (uncredited) / “Mark”

AVC: We try to go as far back in an actor’s on-camera career as possible, and with yours, I can’t tell which you would’ve filmed first, but it’s got to be either The Cosby Show or Krush Groove.

BU: Oh, it was Cosby. The Cosby Show was my second day in New York.

AVC: Wow.

BU: Yeah. [Laughs.] Man, y’know, how did that come about? I was moving to New York… This was in December of ’84. I couldn’t afford to stay in college—I was at Carnegie-Mellon—and I knew I couldn’t go back, so I moved to New York in January of ’85, and my dance teacher at Carnegie-Mellon, Billy Wilson, turned me on to his agent when I got to New York. I went downtown to meet his agent, Perri Kipperman, and she said, “By the way, they’re casting for The Cosby Show, I’ll send you down right now!” So she sent me down, I met the casting director, and… it was just a walk-on part, the first one, but I remember meeting with Cosby, and he said, “You look like a young Sidney Poitier,” which was funny, because he became a mentor to me later on. But he cast me. I was already planning to move the next week, but the casting kind of coincided with me moving, and literally it was, like, my first day in New York. I threw my bags down, and the second day I was on The Cosby Show. Which was crazy.

AVC: And as you intimated, you also ended up on the show a second time later in the season.

BU: That’s right! With Robin Givens. I played Robin Given’s boyfriend in that episode. 

Krush Groove (1985)—“Russell Walker”

AVC: So how did you find your way into Krush Groove, then? Because that wasn’t much later, and it was a pretty substantial role.

BU: Yes! Pat Golden was casting that, and she was the same casting director who did The Cosby Show, so she told them, “There’s this kid who just came here from Carnegie-Mellon, he’s new to New York, he just walked in and got a part on The Cosby Show, but you should meet him.” And I almost didn’t get the part because they thought I looked too… militaristic. Too military. In fact, the producer at the time said, “He looks almost like one of those A Soldier’s Story guys.” Because A Soldier’s Story was in theaters at the time. So it’s ironic that, all these years later, I get nominated [for a Tony] for doing A Soldier’s Play on Broadway!

AVC: When I posted on social media that I was going to be talking to you, someone suggested Krush Groove and observed, “I love the way that Rick Rubin plays himself but apparently Russell Simmons looked in the mirror and saw Blair Underwood.”

BU: [Bursts out laughing.] Oh, that’s hilarious! That’s funny, because everyone else plays themselves. I don’t know if that was Russell’s decision or the producers’ decision, but I’m glad they made that decision! 

AVC: So how in-depth into the rap scene were you at the time? Were you familiar with the artists you were working with?

BU: Oh, yeah. No, I was really attracted to and enjoyed the music, so for me, it was just… I was over the top to be in a movie with Run-DMC and Kurtis Blow. Because, you know, he’d started his game seven years earlier. So he was kind of like a veteran, seven years into the game. So, yeah, I was very excited to be a part of that.

Deep Impact (1998)—“Mark Simon”

BU: Oh, man! You know, it’s so funny… My wife and I and my kids—my young-adult kids—were on vacation in Vietnam last week, and I get on the plane—we’re in Hong Kong, flying from Los Angeles—and the flight attendant sits down next to me and says, “I’m sorry, Mr. Underwood, but I’m such a big fan of Deep Impact, and I have it on my phone. I’ll show you!” And he showed me! [Laughs.] He said, “I watch it all the time!” And he started quoting my lines. There’s that one line at the end where we’re about to go into the meteor, and I said to my wife, “He knows the line better than I do!” It’s something about, “I’ll come back and haunt you if you don’t remember me.” Something like that, anyway.

That was a big deal for me at the time, because it was a major studio film. Steven Spielberg had hand-picked Mimi Leder, who directed the film. That was a huge development, because a female had a chance to direct a $100 million huge-budget studio film. That still doesn’t happen enough today even, and it never happened back then! And then for me to work with Robert Duvall. And then just to play an astronaut! We shot that on Soundstage 15 at Paramount, and just to be an astronaut… Come on, man. I was a kid who always wanted to be an actor. I was always playing cowboys and Indians and astronauts, cops and robbers, and all that stuff. So, really, just to be suspended from the ceiling, all that stuff we shot on the surface of the meteor… We shot for weeks on that Soundstage 15, which is their largest soundstage at Paramount. It was just like a kid’s dream come true, to go to Hollywood and work in movies. It wasn’t a huge role, but just to be a part of that journey was amazing.

Full Frontal (2002)—“Calvin / Nicholas”

BU: Wow. [Laughs.] Again, this was another highlight, and kind of an inflection point in my career, because Julia Roberts had just won an Academy Award, Steven Soderbergh had just won an Academy Award—him for Traffic, her for Erin Brockovich—and [David] Fincher did a cameo and Brad Pitt did a cameo. So all the biggest stars in Hollywood were in this film! So for him to ask me to be in it was amazing to me. I don’t even remember… I mean, I know I didn’t audition. Soderbergh just wanted to meet. I remember that we had lunch together and talked about the role, and it was just great fun.

And at that time it was special because, well, you know, Steven Soderbergh was just the epitome of an auteur and filmmaker, and he just really wanted to get away from the whole Hollywood machinery, and he said, “This movie’s got a small budget, there are no hair and makeup trailers, no wardrobe… You guys bring your own wardrobe! We’re gonna park the cars, we’re gonna shoot it, running and gunning it…” And everybody was up for it, so we did it! And that was just great fun. I really loved that experience.

I Will Follow (2010)—“Evan”

BU: Oh, incredible. You know, Ava DuVernay is a very dear friend, and I met her when I did a series called City Of Angels. Steven Bochco’s City Of Angels. She was the publicist on that show. And when she did I Will Follow… This was her first movie. And it’s so funny, because she said, “I’m gonna put you in everything I do!” And she’ll call almost every time. And sometimes either I’m busy for some reason or already doing other stuff. But I was so glad to do When They See Us and, more recently, Origin. So whenever she calls, I’m there. 

But that particular role was her first movie. And I had just directed my first feature film, and she called me and said, “I know you just finished directing. Can I take you out to dinner?” This was the day before shooting. [Laughs.] And she said, “Can I just pick your brain about directing?” Which is so very ironic now, because she’s one of the most celebrated directors in Hollywood today, and I’m just so happy and excited for her and proud of her. She just texted me a picture of us yesterday, one from a party at her house. She said, “This just popped up on my phone!” But I was so excited for her, because not only was she coming from being a publicist, but she was also a rapper. She was a rapper before she was a publicist! So I think that really speaks to her sense of storytelling and lyricism and also scriptwriting. 

AVC: I will admit, I did not know that she’d been a rapper.

BU: [Laughs.] Yeah! But every project we do together, I walk on the set and she tells everybody, “You know, he was in my first movie! He had my back then, so I said, ‘I’m gonna put him in everything I can!'” Even in 13th, a documentary she did, she had a picture of me and my father. She called and said, “Do you have a picture of yourself or your dad that I can put into the film?” And she threw it into the credits. I was, like, five years old. It was for his military promotion. 

Sex And The City (2003-2004)—“Dr. Robert Leeds”

BU: [Laughs.] These are fun! Thank you! Each one of these are different inflection points in my career, that one because it was such a huge hit. I had never watched it before. I knew it was a big hit, but I’d never watched it… and I actually did say “no” the first time. The first time they had offered the role, to be honest with you, it was about how Samantha was fascinated by dating a Black man and wanted to know if, uh, all of the rumors were true about our anatomy! And I said, “Listen, I’m honored, thank you, but I just don’t want to play a character based on race, on curiosity about a Black man.” 

So they were nice enough to call about a year later, and I said, “Well, is it gonna be about race?” And they said, “No, no, no, we’re not even gonna mention race!” And I think it really did only come up maybe once. It did five episodes, and I think Samantha mentioned it once, saying something about “a Black doctor” that Miranda was dating. And that’s really been a consistent thing in my career: not wanting to be boxed as “the Black guy.” I’ve had that conversation with many producers along the way, and they were so great. They said, “No, he’s just a doctor who Miranda meets in the elevator, and they have a nice little fling.” And it was amazing.

Cynthia Nixon could not have been sweeter, and when I was cast in the role, she and all the other girls were doing a scene on the set, apparently. I was in Los Angeles, they were in New York, and she called me. I’d never met her—I never knew any of them—but she said, “We just wanted to call you and tell you that we heard you got cast, we’re all so excited you’re joining the show, and we just wanted to say welcome to the show when you get here.” She’s just such a sweetheart, and she’s always been that type of person.

Downtown (1986-1987)—“Terry Corsaro”

BU: Wow. Wow! 

AVC: I’ll admit that I’m fascinated by that series for its cast as much as anything, because it’s all over the place: you’ve got Robert Englund, Mariska Hargitay, yourself…

BU: …Millicent Martin, Michael Nouri… Yeah, all over the place! Man, that was a series that… must’ve been in 1985, and it’s what brought me from New York to Los Angeles. I shot the pilot here in Los Angeles, came out here for that, and then I went back. And then they picked it up for a series, I came back like three months later, and we shot 13 episodes, I think. One season for CBS, and then it was canceled. But I attribute that to just finally bringing me out to Los Angeles, and I really have to give credit to Ron Samuels, who produced that show for CBS. He’d seen a tape from New York that my agents had sent. The character’s name, as you said, was Terry Corsaro. It was supposed to be an Italian guy. But he said, “I saw your tape, and I said, ‘That’s the guy.'” And I said, “Do we change his name?” He said, “No, there are Black Italians.” I said, “Okay, let’s do it!” [Laughs.] 

AVC: What do you remember about working with Robert and Mariska?

BU: Oh, you know, we became really great friends at the time. We haven’t talked in awhile, we stayed in touch for many, many years after that. I was just so happy for Mariska. You know, L.A. Law happened for me soon after that, and it was such an amazing opportunity for me as an actor, and it just really kind of put me on the map. But she was kind of struggling, going from one pilot to the next. And then she hit with Law & Order: SVU, and it’s still going. She hasn’t looked back since. So I’m just so pleased for her and happy for her and her success. She was at my wedding, I was at her wedding, and… I’m just very happy for her. It’s rare, but when success like that happens to good people, it’s a joy to see. 

AVC: And Robert Englund, that had to be right around the time Nightmare On Elm Street was taking off.

BU: That’s right. I think it was right after the first one. But, yeah, Robert was so funny, because I was a kid, I was right out of college, maybe two years out, and he was kind of like that person who was an expert and a veteran, and he would always just regale us with these incredible funny Hollywood stories. He just knew everything about everything. The film, the cameras, the angles, the light… I knew nothing about nothing at that time. [Laughs.] So it was great. And I ran into him once when I was doing a play in New York. I was walking down the street, and I literally bumped into him in front of Sardi’s with his family, it was just great to see him. It was just a quick, “Hey, man!” “Long time, no see!” “You look great!” “You look great!” But he’s a good man, and it was great to see him again. 

Three Women (2024)—“Richard”

AVC: As you can see, when I put out the request for reader suggestions, I received a flurry of things to ask you about, from the obvious to the obscure.

BU: Yeah, wow. Well, please let them also know to watch the new stuff, too! [Laughs.] Longlegs, of course, but also a show coming up on September 13 called Three Women on Starz. I just have to say this: you talk about Sex And The City, and this is very risqué, it’s very much pushing the boundaries a little bit. And I’ll tell you, what we do on Three Women makes Sex And The City look like child’s play. It’s some pretty racy stuff!

Soul Of The Game (1996)—“Jackie Robinson”

BU: Oh, wow, yeah, that was one of my favorite roles to play. You know, we shot that for HBO… I think we shot it in five different cities, because they had to find all these different old parks to use. My uncle, Eli Underwood, played in the Negro Leagues of baseball, and I had heard about it growing up. He died a couple of years after [I did] that, but he knew all about it, and I really kept him abreast of what we were doing and sent him pictures and everything, and he saw the final cut, which was great. He played for the Detroit Stars, I think, and he said he played against Satchel Paige. I don’t know if he played against Jackie Robinson. But I’m a history buff anyway, so my favorite kinds of projects are the ones that kind of go back in time. And I had a chance later to meet Rachel Robinson. I couldn’t talk to her during the filming of it, because there was some issue with the rights of the film, but I later met her, and it was just an honor to meet her… and to play that role! 

But why I also remember it… I played football for seven or eight years, little league football, up until high school, and then I started to get into theater. And for some reason…Because I was so used to football, where—when you throw the football—the ball rolls off your fingers, I could not break that with the baseball. [Laughs.] So I’d try to throw the ball, and whenever I would throw, it would go like ten feet in the other direction. I started hitting people! So I said, “Listen, man, don’t have me throw on camera, all right? I can bat. I can hit it! But don’t have me throw it on camera. It’s gonna get messy. Somebody’s gonna get hurt!”

Duckman (1996)—himself

Juanita (2019)—himself

BU: [Completely befuddled.] Duckman? What was Duckman?

AVC: It was an animated series. Jason Alexander did the voice of a duck detective.

BU: That’s right. I forgot all about that. I don’t even remember it.

AVC: That’s okay. Not every role has a story. But you’re credited as playing yourself.

BU: That’s hilarious! Well, another one where I played myself was a film with Alfre Woodard called Juanita. I think that was for HBO. And that was… I mean, all of these, as I keep saying, were fun. Because they were! I mean, I try not to take a job unless I can have a good time at this stage of my life and career. But for that one, it was really a lot of poking fun at myself, and she had a crush on “Blair Underwood,” who kept showing up in her dreams. And her husband, who wrote the script, said, “Now, Blair, just so you know, you’re the man in her dreams, not of her dreams.” [Laughs.] I said, “Okay! Duly noted.”

21 Jump Street (1987)—“Reginald Brooks”

BU: Wow! Dude, you’re taking it back! 

AVC: Now, the person who suggested this one also added, “Don’t tell him this, but… he may have been a little bit over the top.”

BU: [Cackles.] That’s okay!

AVC: I’m legit curious, though, if in that early part of your career you did have directors say things like, “I need you to take it down a bit” or other more specific directions to steer your performances.

BU: Sure! And that one was a little over the top. I mean, I played a character who took over the whole high school at gunpoint with his gang members. [Laughs.] But I had just finished doing One Life To Live, so I had come from a lot of theater training to getting my wings in soap operas, and then that… I think that was my first gig that brought me out here [to Los Angeles], although we shot that up in Canada. But it was the first gig right after One Life To Live. But, yeah, that I remember because Johnny Depp was just starting his career—we were all just starting our careers!—and we were flying up to Canada. And I love to travel. I’ve always loved to travel. So I said, “Wait a minute, you’re gonna fly me to Canada on your dime? And pay me money to do some make-believe stuff? I’m down. Count me in!” 

AVC: I’ve found that a lot of actors will say of projects, “I never saw it, but I know I enjoyed the trip.”

BU: [Laughs.] Right! It’s that location thing!

Set It Off (1996)—“Keith”

BU: Oh, man… You know, Set It Off, we shot that right after Soul Of The Game, and I had initially said “no” to that. Because I was playing this historic, iconic African-American historical figure in Jackie Robinson, and the time, y’know, there was Boyz N The Hood, and Menace II Society was out there, and I’d finished playing this noble Negro… [Laughs.] And I’m reading the script, and there’s a scene where Jada Pinkett’s character—Jada Pinkett-Smith now—was going to sell her body so she could make some money to send her brother to college. And I remember, honestly, I threw the script across the room. I was, like, “I don’t want to do this. I want to do something uplifting for the Black culture and Black characters, and I don’t know if I want to see this.”

And then my manager at the time said, “Well, why did you pass?” And I said, “Ah, it was kind of half-stepping…” She said, “Did you finish the script?” I was, like, “No, I didn’t finish the script.” Also, this was the ’90s, when I was directing music videos, and F. Gary Gray, who directed Set It Off, was my first A.D. on two of my videos. And I think he hit me up and was, like, “Well, why’d you say ‘no’?” And I was, like, “Well, I don’t know…” I didn’t really have a great answer that I even wanted to share. And my manager said, “Just finish the script.” 

So I finished the script, and I saw that the character they were asking me to play was really the love story in the midst of all of this turmoil of all of these characters, the four ladies: Queen Latifah, Vivica Fox, Kimberly Elise, and Jada. It was so well-written, it was such a great platform for them. And to be able to play the love story and the storyline that gave Jada’s character a leg up and a way out of this world, something to hope for, to wish for, someone to love her… I said, “You know what? I’d like to be a part of that.” And I’m so glad I did, because that film resonates to this day. People all the time come up to me and say that they love that movie. So I’m glad that I did it.

Just Cause (1995)—“Bobby Earl”

BU: Oh, man, one of my all-time favorite characters. And it came along at such a pivotal time in my career. Literally, after doing seven years of L.A. Law, the final episode we wrapped at 5 a.m., and I literally went from there to pick up my luggage, to the airport to go to the Bahamas to rehearse with the entire cast and crew. And then we rehearsed, and then we started shooting. But to go from television… [Pauses.] L.A. Law ended in ’94, and then especially, actors on TV didn’t really make the jump to the big screen, and you never knew if you’d be given the opportunity, if you’d be allowed to. Most are talented enough to do it, it’s just about getting the right role and the opportunity to do it. Nowadays it’s not even a thing, but then it wasn’t that often that you’d seen that. So for me to go from seven years worth of L.A. Law to jump to the big screen with Sean Connery, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Capshaw, a 10-year-old Scarlett Johansson, and Ed Harris was extraordinary for me. And what worked in my favor was that the director, Arne Glimcher, had never even seen L.A. Law. So he wasn’t hampered by whether I was a TV actor or whatever. He was like, “No, this is the right guy for the role.” 

So that was an extraordinary, phenomenal opportunity, but also just to play that role was a great challenge, because you see this guy, he looks one way, you think he’s a nice guy, but he’s got all this dark energy underneath as a serial killer. And that really set the stage for so many of the roles after that: Asunder and Posse and the bad guy I played in Tyler Perry’s movie, Madea’s Family Reunion. It’s funny, my daughter is 25 now, and her generation thinks I only play bad guys! [Laughs.] “Why’s your dad always playing bad guys?” And that role in Just Cause was the beginning of that trajectory, which I wholeheartedly welcomed, because up until that, my first 10 years of my career, I only played the noble Negro, the good guy. So ever since then, I’ve played a lot of bad guys, but now it’s a mixture of people, so you don’t really know what to expect. “Is he gonna be a good guy or a bad guy?”

AVC: Having just revisited the film, there’s a moment that I’d forgotten about, but when Sean Connery first encounters you in your prison cell, your instant transformation from Stepin Fetchit to Ivy League… It’s fantastic, and it still hits hard.

BU: Oh, good! Good, good, good. And I’ll tell you, I learned so much from Sean Connery in that. He was the one who encouraged me to go to the dailies and watch my work. And I learned so much from him about subtleties, and how small the muscles in the face are working. It all comes down to just not doing what that reader said about 21 Jump Street. Don’t be over the top. That was my first real understanding of that. Because L.A. Law was a certain style. It was the ’80s and early ’90s. But to watch a movie star work, and to go to dailies and then watch dailies on the big screen… Arne Glimcher would have the cast come if they wanted to, I think we were in a hotel, and we’d watch them on a big screen. I could specifically tune in and study how subtle his work was. So that was a great education for me as an actor.

AVC: Is there a favorite project in your back catalog that didn’t get the love that you thought it deserved?

BU: Well, you know, I’ve got to tell you, Just Cause was one of ’em. Just Cause we thought was gonna be a huge hit, but that came out right when the O.J. Simpson trial was going on, and I think thematically… I mean, I may be stretching it, but thematically you have this Black man who kills this white girl. So there were some racial elements, crime, and I think people were watching it every day on TV, and maybe it kind of filled that intrigue for them. But that film made a killing on video at that time. So it was weird: it was after the fact when people really discovered it. But I wish it had done better in the theaters. I remember that same weekend The Brady Bunch Movie came out, and I think they did better than we did. I was, like, “What the hell?” [Laughs.] “How did that happen?”

The Second Coming (1992)—“Jesus,” director

BU: Oh, man, that came after the Rodney King verdict, and I remember just kind of pontificating and talking to my brother, who’s a writer, and saying, “What would happen if Jesus came back and he was Black? How would people respond to that?” So that was the catalyst for this project. James Earl Jones narrates it for us. I’d done a project with him called Heat Wave—I was just telling my wife about this the other day!—and I said, “Man, there’s no better voice than James Earl Jones…” So I called his home, and his wife said, “I’ll make him do it.” [Laughs.] “Don’t worry about it. He’ll do it.” And he did!

But it was a 30-minute short film, and it was the first thing I directed, really. First narrative outside of music videos. And for the 25th anniversary, the Smithsonian, the African-American Museum, asked if they could put it in their archives. So we screened it there, and it’s now in the Smithsonian in DC. I think it was the first time seeing a Black man on camera playing Jesus, so it had its own kind of legs. It was only a short film, but I remember we did a whole hour on the Donahue show about that film and about just the exploration of skin color and does it matter. That was the issue: Does it matter what skin color he was? Because of the historical actualities of the man that actually walked the earth, as opposed to the deity. So it was a fascinating time.

L.A. Law (1987-1994)—“Jonathan Rollins”

AVC: How did L.A. Law come about? I know you said that you were living and working in Los Angeles by that point, but was it an audition situation?

BU: That was an audition. That was a very traditional audition. I was in L.A., struggling, having come out here for the reasons I’d said, and I got the audition and… [Pauses.] I forget, but I think I read for the casting director first, and I think I’d read for them before, and they said. “He reads like wood. He’s like wood.” [Laughs.] But they called me back nonetheless, and it was with Steven Bochco and Greg Hoblit and Terry Louise Fisher. I read, and I remember I had a little rat-tail at the time, because my hair was a little bit longer. And Steven Bochco said, “Would you be willing to cut that off?” So that let me know that he was thinking, “Maybe this guy could fit in the role.” I said, “Yeah, absolutely! I don’t care about this thing. Yeah, sure!” And I think it was the next day that I found out I got the part.

It was amazing… and it’s ironic that we were just talking about Mario Van Peebles, because Mario played “the Black guy.” He was on the first four episodes of the first season of L.A. Law, and they had no other Black characters. And I knew, because it was such a hit show at the time… I came on the first episode of the second season. They got a lot of conversation and pushback, like, “Why are there no Black characters on this show?” Because Black people loved the show, too! They were, like, “Well, nobody’s representing us!” So I knew they were aware of that, and they wanted to bring in an African-American character in the second season, so I’m just grateful that I could fill those shoes. It changed my life. It absolutely changed my life.

And I was nervous because I was so young. I was 23, and the breakdown when it came out was, “The character is 27-28,” and they made a point of it: “No younger, no older!!!” So I remember it was maybe the second or third day of shooting, Steven Bochco came up to me and he put his arm around me, and he said, “How does it feel to know you have a home for the next five years?” And I’ll tell you, Will, I never repeated that until five years later, because I didn’t know if I believed it. This town is crazy. I really thought they’d see me on camera and think I looked too young and not 27-28, and they were gonna fire me. [Laughs] So luckily it never happened, and it ended up being seven years of my life! And it was an extraordinary experience from beginning to end.

AVC: Was there ever any issue that you had with the evolution of Rollins as a character over the course of the seasons?

BU: Absolutely. The biggest thing was, I had no personal life for the first four or five years. So I had many conversations about, “Why can I not have a personal life? Everybody has love interests, you see them in their homes, and you only see Rollins in the office.” So about five years in, he started having relationships. But it definitely was a conversation—many conversations—about, “Where is the development of this character?” Because I’ll be honest with you, Will: he kind of came in, I think, as a token. Because of the pushback, because of the conversation. “Okay, now we have a Black character.” But that wasn’t sufficient for me. I was, like, “I’m not just gonna be here and contribute the color of my skin. I have much more to contribute.” So they finally came around to it. But it was a lesson learned, one that really continued throughout my career, how important it is to be a co-collaborator with the producers and the writers and have input, to contribute more than just the performance on camera. 

AVC: I was literally going to ask if you’d had that concern when you first joined the cast if he was just going to be the token Black character, as opposed to an actual, fully fleshed-out character.

BU: Yeah. And it took a while. But they eventually got there. As much as they could in the ’90s. Which was nice. 

AVC: I know a revival was in the works, but then it just kind of went away. Is that fully dead?

BU: Yeah, it’s gone. We shot the pilot, with Corbin Bernsen and I, and Jill Eikenberry was in the pilot also. And then the rest of the cast was a brand new, younger cast. A younger generation. I thought it was a great pilot, but ABC didn’t pick it up, and it didn’t end up going anywhere else around town, so… that was that. I was excited about it, but… you know this town: sometimes it feels like there’s no rhyme or reason.