Taye Diggs and Michael Michele: open up about Kevin Hill, Hollywood and being sex symbols

AT the time, it had only been seven weeks since she gave birth to her first child, but Michael Michele was already issuing a physical challenge to Taye Diggs. He may be called the "Black Clark Gable," a triple threat who can sing, dance and act. And he may have brought his unique style and sophistication to bear with her to create one of the hottest shows on TV. But the question Michele has is simple: Can the Brother hoop?

"Taye asked me over and over to play a game of one-on-one when I was pregnant," says the 5-foot-9 actress and former Indiana high school basketball star. "I will whip his tail now that I'm not pregnant, and he knows it! That's why he hasn't asked me anymore."

Make no mistake. Starring in the critically acclaimed Kevin Hill, the two take their acting responsibility seriously. Diggs, who plays the lead character, and Michele, who plays his boss on the show, realize that they are attracting legions of viewers and taking big strides in redefining acting roles for Blacks on the small screen.

But get the pair together, away from the set, and there is no shortage of laughs. At a recent photo shoot in New York City, two of entertainment's most versatile stars joke, horse around and carry on. At one point during the Manhattan photo shoot, Diggs spins Michele across the set to the music playing in the background. A professionally trained dancer, he was attempting to teach Michele how to take her R&B club moves to the next level. It becomes obvious early on that the actress--with a range of talents so varied that she can be equally convincing playing a cop, doctor, or attorney--would need more lessons to hold her own with Diggs on the dance floor. What was also obvious was the admiration shared between two entertainers. "We have a really good time together," Michele says. "Taye is really great. If I had a brother, he would be my brother. He's a gentleman; I like that, too." Meanwhile, Diggs calls Michele "wonderful. She's a beautiful woman. We have a common respect for each other's work."

Diggs and Michele both say that UPN's Kevin Hill is a historic television show on several levels. Diggs is cast as a lawyer who "inherits" his deceased cousin's daughter. Overnight, he goes from a date-a-night bachelor and high-powered attorney to a doting father. He quits his job at another law firm and is hired by Michele at her more family-friendly firm. Michele plays "Jessie Gray," and is Diggs' boss.

"I loved the writing and the premise. It was a role I could see myself doing for quite a while," says Diggs, who is also a producer on the show. "The show has heart. I think viewers love the interaction with my character and the child. The role presented me with so many relationships to play. The playboy. The father-figure with a young girl in his life. The successful attorney. All are great layers."

Even so, Diggs says acting in the lead role and producing the television show has been much more work than he thought it would be. The biggest adjustment is the workload. The show is set in New York, but it is shot in Toronto five days a week. "My head is spinning," he says. "I'm a perfectionist, so I'm always trying to make the show better."

On a network more familiar for its half-hour sitcoms, the one-hour show that mixes drama with comedy is "something extraordinary ...," says Michele, who has starred on New York Undercover, Homicide: Life on the Street, and ER. "It's a light that can shine brighter because there aren't a number of other shows that are like it on UPN. I've done enough television to know that a network can have four or five shows that are basically copycats of one another. Four fall to the ground. One survives. But if you have one show on a network that's like this, then you have a greater chance of survival, and more support from the powers-that-be."

Diggs agrees, and adds that when it comes to his character, he draws from many of his personal experiences. But he admits that he is not as smooth as his character on the show. "Kevin Hill is Taye Diggs in my dreams. It's the person I wish I was," he says. "I'm too much on the nerdy side to be like Kevin Hill."

In fact, Diggs shies away completely from his sex-symbol image, cultivated after his role as Winston, a young Jamaican who falls in love with an older woman (played by Angela Bassett) in the hit movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back. "I am very appreciative and grateful" to be thought of as a sex symbol, he says. "But I don't get caught up in it. I try to focus on my work. As soon as you get caught up in that, it's all downhill from there."

Surprisingly, he says he continues to see himself as the 7th grade boy with tape on his glasses and high-water pants. The guy who, he says, has never been a ladies' man, and that it wasn't until late in high school that he came into his own. "It was when I transferred to a performing arts high school," he says. "I was immediately accepted. If you had talent, then you were immediately accepted. Until then, I hadn't enjoyed myself growing up."