Blair Underwood rejected his first offer to star in “Sex and the City” because “it was about how Samantha was fascinated by dating a Black man and wanted to know if all of the rumors were true about our anatomy.”https://t.co/rLxt7MRyXr
— Variety (@Variety) July 25, 2024
Blair Underwood participated in a career retrospective interview.
He remembered turning down the first offer he got to join HBO’s “Sex and the City.”
“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.’”
The “Sex and the City” team accepted his rejection and then called back a year later with another offer to star on the comedy series.
Underwood said to the team, “Well, is it gonna be about race? They said, ‘No, no, no, we’re not even gonna mention race!’ 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.”
Underwood would go on to play Dr. Robert Leeds, a brief romantic love interest for Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), during the show’s sixth and final season.
