July 26, 2024
Blair Underwood Wasn’t Feeling His Initial ‘Sex And The City’ Character Due To Race-Based Role
Blair Underwood turned down a role during earlier season of "Sex and the City" due to his character's storyline being solely about race.
Blair Underwood has always refused to be boxed in in his career. Look at Sex and the City. Although Underwood would go on to play a brief romantic love interest for one of the show’s lead characters, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), in HBO’s hit series, he did it on his terms.
“I actually did say ‘No’ the first time,” he told Will Harris at The A.V. Club in a career retrospective that ran July 22. “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.’”
During a 2021 interview with Vulture, Underwood did confirm that the role he was initially offered a spot for was one of Sex and the City‘s earlier seasons, where another lead character, Samantha, portrayed by actress Kim Cattrall, dated a Black man out of sheer curiosity. The episode, titled “No Ifs, Ands, or Butts,” is more along the lines of the fetish role that Underwood said he was not willing to make a compromise to play. Moreover, he had no desire to become boxed in at any point in his career.
Standing up for himself proved to work in his favor in the end. Underwood said the Sex and the City team not only accepted his decision to decline the role, they called back later with another offer, one where he explicitly asked if the role was going to be about race.
“They said, ‘No, no, no, we’re not even gonna mention race!’” he told Harris. “And I think it really did only come up maybe once. I 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.”
Today, Underwood is revered for his work as an actor, starring in the recent horror film Longlegs, where he plays Agent Carter, a stand-up American boss who goes from protector and hero to demonic adversary in the film that is centered around an unsolved serial killer case that shifts unexpectedly when evidence reveals the occult’s involvement.
Underwood has had quite an illustrious career, appearing in a wide array of films and TV shows, including Set it Off and L.A. Law.
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