Grand Talent and Sex Appeal!

Carson was born the third child in a family of four in Brooklyn, New York. In junior high, she moved with her family to the Florida city of Gainesville when her father, a professor of journalism, took a job at the University of Florida campus there. In Gainesville, they were the first African-American family on their block, and a few of the white kids in Carson's new neighborhood called her hateful names to her face for the first time in her life. "It was pretty shocking," the actress told David Handleman in Cosmopolitan. "But it was also wonderful because I had to learn about a different race of people, and I was never really the type to just sit in the back. I became the only black girl doing a lot of things, like being a cheerleader or in the theater program."

In New York, Carson began looking for theater work. She did not take acting lessons, but instead watched films of performers she admired, such as Marlon Brando, Cicely Tyson, and Diana Ross, among others. She also scoured the classified sections of show-business newspapers for open casting calls, and sometimes even changed clothes between auditions on the subway. In 1990, she won roles in off-Broadway productions and did some summer stock, which led to work in productions of the acclaimed Negro Ensemble Company. She also landed a performing spot at the Apollo Comedy Hour, which helped her win a guest role on Law & Order. Her next television job was another one-time appearance--but on the very last episode of the Cosby Show that aired in 1992. She was frustrated when the few lines she had been given were cut at the last minute.

In 1997, Carson was offered another solid, career-making role from the producer responsible for Picket Fences. The creator of Ally McBeal, David E. Kelley, had seen Carson in Divas, and cast her as Renee Radick, the roommate and best friend of the pilot's flaky title character. Whereas Ally rides a rollercoaster of emotion and insecurity, Carson's Renee is grounded and common-sensical. Though it had not been written specifically for an African-American woman, Kelley decided Carson fit the role perfectly. The show debuted in the fall of 1997 and was an immediate, though sometimes controversial success.

Like Ally, Carson's Renee is also a lawyer, but a district attorney who spars in court with the partners and associates of the private practice where Ally works; she also participates in many of the same off-hours activities as her on-screen roommate. Jet described her character with terms like "strong-willed.... ultraconfident," and "cool, sexy and level-headed." After the show's first season of high ratings and serious media attention, there was wild speculation that Flockhart was suffering from anorexia, while Carson was praised for being one of the few women on prime-time television who is both curvaceous and a femme fatale.

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