Thanks to emilie for transcribing and sending this in

TV Guide

By: Brian Hartigan

Catching Dark Angel’s Valarie Rae Miller out of character

Valarie Rae Miller wants to meet for lunch at one of her favorite restaurants, Bourbon Street Shrimp and Grille, just blocks away from the Fox Studios in Los Angeles.

The restaurant’s name reveals the menu will include Cajun foods.

“You like it spicy?” the waiter asks Miller cautiously. She has decided to order the barbecue chicken.

“Yeah,” she replies. “It’s good, right?” The waiter assures her the chicken is excellent. I opt for the pasta and shrimp.

When our meals arrive (along with two big glasses of water), Miller looks over and, in a put-on southern-fried drawl, says: “So, now you have to do it in style and sop it up with bread.” I trust her, though halfway through lunch, I’m definitely thankful for the water.

Miller, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to mind. As she said, she likes it spicy.

Perhaps that’s why her casting as Original Cindy in this season’s hit series Dark Angel seems pitch perfect. “When I first read a description of the character, it put my off a little bit because it could have been a stereotype; a leather-clad lesbian with nails,” she says. “But the it also described her as ‘ghetto-fabulous’ and I thought [it would be] fun and I could play with it.”

Original Cindy, as with most of Dark Angel’s characters, is an important step toward ethnic equality on television, although Miller’s character was not originally written with an African-American actor in mind. “The cast in believably diverse,” Miller explains. “It’s not done for the sake of having a token. For my part [the show’s producers, including Titanic’s James Cameron] saw every type of ethnicity. I was told they saw over a thousand different actors for every single part.”

That said, Miller realizes how lucky she was to land a role in one of the most talked about new shows of the season. But, like many of Hollywood’s most captivating success stories, Miller’s part in Dark Angel almost didn’t happen. At the time she auditioned for her role, Miller was contracted to host a talk show for Fox Studios. She says, eventually, the legal department of that show pressed her to choose between the projects.

“The Dark Angel company said it was okay to do both, but the talk show said no. But they let me test before I had to give an answer.”

That screen test, followed by another opposite the show’s already-cast star,
Jessica Alba, helped Miller make her decision. “There’s supposed to be this
wonderful on-camera friendship between Jessica’s character and my character,” she explains. “And I felt a special kind of bond with her. All of the pieces just fell together in the right way.” Then again, even if she didn’t get the part on Dark Angel, it would not have been out of character to brush it off. “I’ve always liked many other things,” she says, listing stand-up comedy, children’s programming, and writing among some of them. It is this optimistic attitude that will prove beneficial with the chance of a Screen Actors Guild strike still a possibility. “There’s a potential strike
coming up and if there’s a long period of time [where I’m not acting,] I figure I can get another business going on.”

The waiter, all smiles, comes to clear our plates and offer more water (yes, please). In the background, a Bonnie Raitt song drifts out from the speakers and Miller sits back and begins to lip-sync. Would she add singing to her resume?

Miller smiles. “A little bit,” she confesses. “But, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, so I’m not going to sing.”

Fair enough, I think. Though I’m guessing it wouldn’t hurt a bit.