Television

LOS ANGELES – A pregnant woman approaches with three tots in tow. "I am so sorry," she says, one hand on her protruding belly, the other covering her mouth. "I love you. I love you," she gushes as she gets closer to Blair Underwood, dining at a sidewalk cafe in Los Angeles. "It was the funniest thing when you were on that show, Christine," the woman says. "I was dying. The whole time I was dying."

"I was too 'cause I loved it," replies Mr. Underwood, who has been toiling in TV and film for two decades and might just get his first Emmy nomination this year, if buzz is a reliable barometer of such things.

The woman referred to Mr. Underwood's guest-star stint on CBS' The New Adventures of Old Christine this season in which he played Christine's (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) suave, sexy boyfriend, Daniel.

But that was only one of three prominent spots Mr. Underwood held on the tube this season.

On ABC's new drama, Dirty Sexy Money, he plays the wealthy, dashing and ambiguous Simon Elder. On HBO's nine-week series, In Treatment, which ended in March, he took on Alex Prince, a troubled Navy pilot whose brusque demeanor disguised his profound pain.

Week after week, Mr. Underwood's exacting portrayal of that duality captured both critics and his peers, leading to industrywide speculation that this could be Mr. Underwood's year.

"You know, I've never had that conversation before this year," he says. "So by the grace of God, this is 23 years in the business. These three projects are all projects I'm proud of. It's not just fluff or doing it because you can. So to be able to have the opportunity to do the work and then for people to respond in such a way, to engage in that conversation, is in and of itself a reward to me."

Mr. Underwood's commitment to Dirty Sexy Money doesn't allow him to return to Old Christine, which is really why Daniel broke up with Christine, crushing women everywhere, including, possibly, Ms. Louis-Dreyfus.

"I was flying on Southwest Airlines somewhere," Ms. Louis-Dreyfus says, "and as I'm exiting the plane, the two flight attendants come running up to me and they go, 'I'm sorry, we don't mean to trouble you. We just have one quick question: Is Blair Underwood a good kisser?' " Her answer: "Oh, yeah."

Over the last two decades, Mr. Underwood has turned in solid performances on popular TV series such as L.A. Law and Sex and the City, and films such as Full Frontal. In Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion, he portrayed a charismatic man who secretly beats his wife and later falls apart.

Someone who took notice of that performance was In Treatment creator Rodrigo Garcia.

"I think that it was easy to cast Blair for that terrific presence, that eloquent way of speaking, the way he conducts himself physically," Mr. Garcia says. "But what he brought to Alex that was more than I bargained for was that way of balancing his incredible cockiness with those glimpses of pain and insecurity."

Instantly, Alex became one of Mr. Underwood's favorite characters, but he wondered if viewers would be put off by his abrasiveness. His own father answered that question when one episode compelled him to share with his son that during the Vietnam War, he also had followed orders that led to the deaths of innocent people.

"He got choked up telling me," Mr. Underwood says. "This character has traits that address the way many of us men are wired. We come from a place where it's, 'Don't talk. Man up.' Alex needs to keep coming back to [the therapist] to understand so many things, but it hurts too much.

"That's the tragedy of the character, but it's also why I love the character so much because we're all trying to find the path that leads us to understanding who we are and what we are."

Maria Elena Fernandez,

Los Angeles Times

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