'Make love, skinny dip and drink expensive champagne': Inside Niecy Nash-Betts' second act
NEW YORK — Niecy Nash-Betts is about to answer a question about the arc of her career when something across the table distracts her.
"Hold on one sec," she says, as wife Jessica Betts cuts off a lamb chop that's pink on the inside, despite ordering hers medium well. "Do you need that cooked a little more?"
Nash-Betts beckons to the waiter and politely sends the meat back to the kitchen, just one of several occasions on which the actor-producer, glammed up in a bright coral dress for a talk show appearance earlier in the day, checks in on Betts, who sits next to her, exuding quiet charisma. (At one point, Betts pulls up a picture of Michael Jae Betts, the maltipoo Nash-Betts gave her for their recent anniversary — and who, like Betts, was born on Juneteenth.)
Two years after their surprise wedding, the couple are still as giddy as newlyweds. They even enjoy working together: Betts, a musician, has a guest role in "The Rookie: Feds," premiering this week on ABC, as a love interest for Nash-Betts' protagonist, Simone Clark, a former high school guidance counselor forging a new path in the FBI.
For her part, Nash-Betts is both a consummate nurturer and a skilled multitasker, shifting throughout our conversation from her upbringing in South-Central and Compton — "along with Venus, Serena and Anthony Anderson" — to the challenges of breaking into the industry without connections, to the host of projects currently keeping her busy. In addition to "The Rookie: Feds," she also appears as Glenda Cleveland, whose calls about her suspicious neighbor go ignored by police in Netflix's "Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story," and has hosting duties
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