INTERVIEW WITH ALFRE  WOODARD
By Christina Radish
 
 Currently one of the busiest working women in  show business, four-time Emmy Award winner Alfre Woodard can currently be seen on the big screen in the new inter-racial romantic comedy Something New, while  also appearing in the home of millions of viewers, every week, on the hugely  popular and successful ABC series Desperate  Housewives.  Playing the well-off  mother of a career woman who has not found the same success in love as she has  in business, the 53-year-old Tulsa, Oklahoma native says that, because she  understands what it is like to be raised in a culture of black elitism, she felt  that she could bring her character, Joyce, to life in a believable  way. 

“She really embraces the  culture that she was raised in.  I grew up around women like that.  I  was supposed to be a debutante.  It was a big deal because, if you are from  certain families, you are supposed to do it.  My sister was Miss Debutante  for the Elite Ladies, and I was supposed to be it, six years later.   Meanwhile, I turned into a hippy and political activist.  They tried a lot  of different campaigns to get me to do it.  But, in the end, my mother and  father said, ‘If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it.’  And, I just  couldn’t.  So, I wanted to be able to do Joyce because I thought that I  could bring her to the screen and make the Joyces of the world laugh at  themselves.”Another way in which Woodard  identified with the script for Something New was in the fact that she, herself,  is in an inter-racial relationship with her husband of 23 years, writer Roderick  Spencer, with whom she has two  children. 
  
“I think the thing that’s familiar is that, when  you meet somebody -- and it can just be a friend, not even a potential lover --  and you feel like, ‘I get that person,’ you go with it,” she explains.   “I’ve never been a person that resisted the impulse when I felt something in  that person that would make me more myself.  Love is a spiritual  quality.  And, if you happen to find a friend, or a potential lover, it is  a rare and blessed thing to find.  It just seems like spitting in the face  of God to go, ‘Oh, no, I want him to have this or this instead.’  You can  do that, and that’s fine, but that’s a life decision, and I was not going to  live my life as a victim of history.”

“As a woman in an inter-racial relationship, and  with my family,” she continues, “I was clear as to why I was with that person,  to the point that my mother was convinced that my husband was really  black.  She loved him so, and he felt so familiar to her, that she said, ‘I  think something in that family has some black in them.’  Most people who  see people in a mixed race relationship, or who are the same sex, and think,  ‘They live in a fantasy world.  Both of them probably deny who they are to  be together.’  But, the thing that they don’t realize is that you’re more hyper-aware of who you are because you have to be.  Those relationships  tend to last longer.  The statistics on divorce in inter-racial and  inter-faith marriages is so much lower than the divorce rate of the average  ones.”

Although she has been happily married  for over two decades, Woodard does admit to having been on the receiving end of  the social pressure that comes with being part of an inter-racial  relationship. “If I was walking by myself, in  New York, nobody would whistle at me.  But, suddenly, if I was with my  husband, everybody would be interested.  Occasionally, I’d ever get, ‘What  are you doing with that white man?’  When people apologize for their  presence, they become a target.  If you’re walking down the street with  your man, or if it ‘s someone of the same sex, you cannot  apologize just for  your presence.  If somebody confronts me, I say, ‘I’m a good person because  this person loves me, and I love him.  We happen to have been born in  different cultures, but I have more in common with this person.’  There are  people all over the country who live in places where their lives are still in  jeopardy because they are interracially mixed.  But, the thing that’s wild  about that is, you couldn’t possibly dilute the black or white race any more  than it already is.  Why people want to get picky about it now is  amazing.”

As the matriarch of the only African  American family on Wisteria Lane, Woodard is having a great time playing Betty  Applewhite on season two of what is currently one of the most popular shows on  television.  But, she admits to never having seen an episode, when she was  cast on the series.

“I had heard of it, but I hadn’t seen it,” she  says.  “Besides working and doing a lot of political action work, I am  raising a 14-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son.  When I heard about  the role, I said, ‘I’m interested, but I’ve never seen it.’  So, Marc  Cherry said, ‘I’ll send you over some episodes.  Call me tomorrow  morning.’  I got 15 episodes at 6 o’clock at night, and my husband, my  assistant and I divvied them up and went to different parts of the house to  watch them.  When we were done, we got back together, had a cup of coffee  and said, ‘This is what happened.’ That marathon viewing stirred me up  enough that I wanted to do it.  I really liked that it
breaks  form.”

Woodard, who is willing to stay with the  show as long as Cherry, the creator, will allow, also has a few secrets to  reveal about what to expect from her character for the remainder of the  season.  “Right now, we are headed into a whole new direction.  We  played out the mystery [of why my son was locked in the basement], and it’s time  for them to get outed.  You saw when he started to break out, and now, we  are out in the open and Bree is on to me.  She hasn’t seen the last of  me.  I gave that drunk gal a ride home, and then she turned on me.   It’s like, ‘Oh, no, you do not turn on Betty  Applewhite.’”