Jensen Atwood Official Site

By Arnold Wayne Jones

From the streets of South Central to Dallas Black Pride, Jensen Atwood has become an unlikely but appreciative object of gay male lust

NOAH'S HEARTTHROB: Jensen Atwood helped launch Black Pride early with a Dallas appearance in September.

Normally when you meet a handsome man in hotel bar for drinks on a Saturday night and are having breakfast with him on Sunday morning, there's a good story in between.

Unfortunately, this is not one of those stories. Though it's not for lack of trying.

It's the night before the Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade, and Jensen Atwood, who plays Wade on Logo's "Noah's Arc," is drinking a Hennessey on the rocks in the Library Bar of the Warwick Melrose Hotel. He's in town making an appearance and promoting his new calendar during a pre-event for Dallas Black Pride. But it is not his first visit to the Metroplex.

"One of my first memories of Dallas was when I was here with the national tour of ‘Miss Saigon,'" he says.

Really? Did he play one of the leading roles? Or perhaps one of the soldiers in the chorus?

"Selling programs in the lobby," he says, then goes into a barker's voice: "PRO-grams! Get your ‘Miss Saigon' PRO-grams!' I made it so you needed to buy one of these."

Atwood flashes a smile that says he could sell veal to a vegan, and I find myself wanting to buy that program even now.

It sounds like a stretch to go from novelty hawker to the sexy star of a hit cable TV series, but for Atwood, the progression made perfect sense. "Entertainment was something I wanted to do, but I didn't take anything real seriously until the military came along," he says.

Atwood enlisted in the Army alongside his older brother, serving two years. When he got out, he finally had the discipline to pursue his passions. Atwood spent 10 years doing "extras" works in TV shows like "The Parkers" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "90210" (he was the black guy, he jokes), eventually getting his Screen Actors Guild card - something hard to come by for extras.

"They have a certain number of vouchers per show, but the casting agents usually give them to the beautiful blondes," he says - although he admits benefiting from a similarly smitten casting director.

"Thank god for gay guys or I'd be nowhere," he says, sparkling that molten grin.

Atwood means it. He warmly embraces his fans, familiar with him from gay shows "Noah's Arc" and "Dante's Cove," without any hesitation. He met "Noah's Arc" creator Patrik-Ian Polk when working as an extra on "Punks," brashly approaching the director with his headshot and a pitch: I'd like to work with you again. A few years later, Polk handed him a script that was to become "Noah's Arc."

Atwood was in Dallas last month for a Pride event, signing his new calendar.

The gay cable channel Logo picked up the show, which became a big hit by cable standards, with a loyal following of men attracted to what amounted to a gay black male West Coast version of "Sex and the City:" Four bitchy friends and the men in their lives. In that scenario, Atwood's Wade was "Mr. Big," the love interest of Noah ... but also a man just on the brink of realizing who he is.

"You get to see him in this transition, his coming out," Atwood explains. "Wade was never straight, it's just that you get to see him in his first gay relationship. But that makes him an outsider" among the friends.

Such "outsider" status has persisted in Atwood's own life. Rumors to the contrary, he will be appearing in the "Noah's Arc" movie, which begins a slow nationwide rollout on Oct. 24. (For a time, there were reports Shemar Moore would step into the role - and Atwood had no way to dispel them.) That uneasiness was compounded by the shock of the series' cancellation after two apparently successful seasons.

"I was pretty devastated," Atwood admits. "We planned contractually to do six seasons. When we got the call that we were canceled, it was ‘Huh?' The buzz was phenomenal."

Atwood, though, wasn't always so gung-ho on the project. When he was first sent the sexually-explicit script, "my reaction was HELL NO!" he says. "That came from a place of fear more than anything. But all of the things I was feeling for not wanting to play the roles were what also fueled my desire to play it. It's like when actors do Shakespeare - the same type of fear. But it embodies everything I ever wanted in a part."

His trepidation was fed by his upbringing in the violent milieu of South Central Los Angeles ("I might as well have grown up in Bosnia," he says) - not exactly a bastion where being different pays dividends. Being on "Noah's Arc" opened his eyes to new realities.

"I had no idea there were so many successful black gay men" until he started playing Wade, he says. "I think a lot of gay kids feel they are out there by themselves, especially in towns where there's not much but the military."

Atwood is slated to start filming a movie with Snoop Dogg in which he plays a gang member - which, he says, is taking a different kind of risk: perpetuating a stereotype about young black men, not unlike those about gays. He decided to take the role because "my audience has not seen that side of me yet as an actor."

His audience has, in fact, been aggressive in their pursuit of Atwood. It got so bad at one time, his manager had to get an unlisted phone number to escape one stalker.

"Yeah, sorry about that," I offer sheepishly.

Jensen laughs, then glances upward with those dark, misty eyes, turning on that killer smile once more. And I find myself looking through my wallet, scooping out enough cash to buy a non-existent program for "Miss Saigon."




This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition October 3, 2008.

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