Thanks to pam for the link ;)

Entertainment News Daily

Brian Hartigan
c. TV Guide Canada

It shouldn't surprise any fan of ``Dark Angel'' to know that Valarie Rae Miller likes it spicy.

At her suggestion, she's being interviewed over lunch at one of her favorite Los Angeles restaurants, Bourbon Street Shrimp & Grille, a few blocks away from the Fox studios where her hit television series, ``Dark Angel,'' is shot.

Miller orders the barbecued chicken, and the waiter hesitates.

``You like it spicy?'' he asks.

``Yeah,'' she replies, rolling the word around her mouth.

That figures, given her role as Original Cindy in ``Dark Angel.'' As her name suggests, Cindy doesn't go in much for the conventional. A stylish, African-American lesbian who is a staunch friend to series star Jessica Alba's Max, Cindy knows what she wants, and most of the time she gets it.

``When I first read a description of the character, it put me off a little bit,'' Miller says, ``because it could have been a stereotype - a leather-clad lesbian with nails. But then it also described her as `Ghetto-Fabulous,' and I thought it was fun, and I could play with it.''

Original Cindy, like most of ``Dark Angel's'' eclectic characters, is an important step toward ethnic equality on television, although creators James Cameron and Charles Eglee didn't originally devise Miller's character with an African-American actor in mind.

``The cast is believably diverse,'' Miller says. ``It's not done for the sake of having a token. For my part, they saw every type of ethnicity. I was told they saw over a thousand actors for every single part.''

Since then Miller has made the role her own, of course, capitalizing on her quirky screen presence and her chemistry with Alba. It's all the more disconcerting, then, to realize that, 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 in the Fox science-fiction drama, Miller was already contracted to host a talk show for the network. For a while she envisioned doing both shows, but eventually she realized that something had to give.

``The `Dark Angel' company said it was OK to do both,'' she says, ``but the talk show said no. But they let me go ahead and test before I had to give an answer.''

That screen test, followed by another opposite Alba, who had already been cast as Max, helped Miller make her decision.

``There's supposed to be this wonderful on-camera friendship between Jessica's character and my character,'' she says, ``and I felt a special kind of bond with her. All of the pieces just fell together in the right way.''

For many performers who achieve a breakthrough role, their entire life revolves around their show or movie. That's not the case for Miller, a confirmed eclectic who lists standup comedy, children's programming and writing among her other interests.

That may come in handy, since ``Dark Angel'' is imperiled - as is every other show on television - by a looming strike of the Writers Guild. She could find herself with some serious time on her hands.

``I've always liked many other things,'' she says. ``There's a potential strike coming up, and if there's a long period of time, I figure I can get another business going on.''

If all else fails, Miller - who was born in Lafayette, La., and raised in Fort Worth, Texas - can fall back on her other job, as host of ABC's ``One Saturday Morning'' lineup of kid-oriented programming.

She had wondered, she admits, whether ABC would have a problem with its children's host moonlighting as a futuristic lesbian in leather, but so far she says she's encountered no difficulties. And as a result, she's got a fan base which includes both schoolchildren and the lesbian community.

``I think that's great,'' Miller says. ``And I don't think there's any conflict in that, either. That's the only kind of weirdness or opposition that I've met with `Dark Angel,' people trying to read too much into everything.

``I was obsessed for a while with reading the bulletin boards on the show's Web sites,'' she adds, ``but I stopped. I had to stop - people made so many ridiculous comments. The only thing that really bothered me was when people said they were offended that Cindy was a lesbian or that gay people are always trying to push their lifestyle onto others.

``When they'd figure out that I was the girl on `Saturday Morning,' they'd say `It's really offensive that they'd let her do that,''' Miller adds. ``But those people, it's kind of miraculous that they're walking upright and their knuckles aren't scraping so that they can't type on the computer.''

(Brian Hartigan is a senior writer at TV Guide Canada, based in North York, Ontario.)