Post by jag11 on Jun 17, 2007 18:20:26 GMT -5
Sometimes it's the questions I didn't get to ask during an interview that haunt me. Take, for instance, a very nice breakfast interview more than a week ago with Shemar Moore, who co-stars in Criminal Minds (CTV and CBS) as FBI Special Agent Derek Morgan.
He'd flown in the day before from L.A. as a special guest for CTV's fall presentation and was in a jovial mood. When he went out for dinner the night before in Toronto, fans kept shouting at him, "Hey, Malcolm!" – a reference to Malcolm Winters, the character he played on The Young & The Restless from 1994 to 2002.
So we had a great talk. But it wasn't about the subject everybody wanted to discuss a day or two later. Because Shemar had been busted the previous week on a charge of suspicion of DUI. He was arrested for doing 104 km on L.A.'s Santa Monica Boulevard, taken to the police station, given a Breathalyzer test and booked. He'll appear in court in L.A. on June 26.
All this from a guy who was articulate and funny and completely unflappable when I met him in his hotel suite. The arrest hadn't yet been publicized at that time.
Some of Moore's other traits? "I bake," was one revelation. He can also unicycle. And there are pictures of him out there in hot pants from his modelling days.
Above all, he's a pretty serious actor. He says, "Criminal Minds could change my career. If Denzel can jump from TV to movies, why not others? Sure, Y&R was great fun, but a lot of good actors get stuck in soaps. I'd always get the sex symbol questions back then."
"Every actor has to start somewhere. On daytime, there are 60-page scripts. You rehearse it, then do it. It's a great learning experience."
Moore says CM's first season was very tentative. "We didn't know what kind of show to make. It was all changing, each episode, how to be different from CSI and Without A Trace and Cold Case"
Since then, "the stakes have been raised. Our murder cases can get so gruesome, even my mom won't watch. What we do is take a killer and force viewers to look at themselves, their communities, how could it have been stopped. Our endings aren't all neatly tied up. We can wind up upsetting some viewers."
This past season, CM began beating Lost in the ratings on several occasions and landing just out of the top 10 with an average U.S. audience of 16 million a week. And I get to act with Mandy Patinkin every week – how much fun is that?"
More importantly, he also has job security. "It's something very dear for an actor. To be able to eat!" he said with a hearty laugh.
Moore was born to a mother of Dutch descent and an African-American father. He graduated from high school in Palo Alto and took a degree in communications at Santa Clara University.
And he's a pretty good dancer, too. At the CTV launch, he performed an impromptu breakdance on the stage – not that surprising from a former host of TV's Soul Train. It was like he didn't have a care in the world.
www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/225515
He'd flown in the day before from L.A. as a special guest for CTV's fall presentation and was in a jovial mood. When he went out for dinner the night before in Toronto, fans kept shouting at him, "Hey, Malcolm!" – a reference to Malcolm Winters, the character he played on The Young & The Restless from 1994 to 2002.
So we had a great talk. But it wasn't about the subject everybody wanted to discuss a day or two later. Because Shemar had been busted the previous week on a charge of suspicion of DUI. He was arrested for doing 104 km on L.A.'s Santa Monica Boulevard, taken to the police station, given a Breathalyzer test and booked. He'll appear in court in L.A. on June 26.
All this from a guy who was articulate and funny and completely unflappable when I met him in his hotel suite. The arrest hadn't yet been publicized at that time.
Some of Moore's other traits? "I bake," was one revelation. He can also unicycle. And there are pictures of him out there in hot pants from his modelling days.
Above all, he's a pretty serious actor. He says, "Criminal Minds could change my career. If Denzel can jump from TV to movies, why not others? Sure, Y&R was great fun, but a lot of good actors get stuck in soaps. I'd always get the sex symbol questions back then."
"Every actor has to start somewhere. On daytime, there are 60-page scripts. You rehearse it, then do it. It's a great learning experience."
Moore says CM's first season was very tentative. "We didn't know what kind of show to make. It was all changing, each episode, how to be different from CSI and Without A Trace and Cold Case"
Since then, "the stakes have been raised. Our murder cases can get so gruesome, even my mom won't watch. What we do is take a killer and force viewers to look at themselves, their communities, how could it have been stopped. Our endings aren't all neatly tied up. We can wind up upsetting some viewers."
This past season, CM began beating Lost in the ratings on several occasions and landing just out of the top 10 with an average U.S. audience of 16 million a week. And I get to act with Mandy Patinkin every week – how much fun is that?"
More importantly, he also has job security. "It's something very dear for an actor. To be able to eat!" he said with a hearty laugh.
Moore was born to a mother of Dutch descent and an African-American father. He graduated from high school in Palo Alto and took a degree in communications at Santa Clara University.
And he's a pretty good dancer, too. At the CTV launch, he performed an impromptu breakdance on the stage – not that surprising from a former host of TV's Soul Train. It was like he didn't have a care in the world.
www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/225515