Daniel Sunjata, Although he has played a fashion designer in The Devil Wears Prada, the lovestruck Christian to Jennifer Garner’s Roxanne in Cyrano De Bergerac, baseball legend Reggie Jackson in The Bronx is Burning and poet Langston Hughes in Brother to Brother, Daniel Sunjata is best known as New York City fireman Franco Rivera in the FX series Rescue Me. This month, he adds a new role to his resume: Massachusetts State Police investigator Win Garano in the Lifetime movies At Risk and The Front, a pair of crime dramas adapted from Patricia Cornwell novels that premiere Apr. 10 and Apr. 17 respectively.
Sunjata stars opposite Andie McDowell as his D.A. boss, a woman with her own self-serving agenda. “That ticks him off, but at the same time there’s a subtle sexual tension between the two of them and that factors in as well,” says the Chicago-born, New York-based actor, who’s no stranger to procedural drama. “One of my first jobs on TV was on Law & Order Special Victims Unit. I was a nameless laboratory tech who’d come on every three episodes for 15 seconds,” he remembers. Honey did not bat a lash when the dynamic actor shared more memories and insights about his roles and himself.
What drew you to this character, Win Garano?
The thing that resonated with me most deeply was playing a character with the same kind of ethnic ambiguity as I have. Win Garano is of mixed race and so am I. I also happen to be adopted. Win isn’t adopted but he lost his parents in a tragic accident and was raised by his grandmother so there were aspects of that that I was able to identify with. Also, having the opportunity to show that I can be number one on the call sheet and fulfill the demands of that, something that I’d yet to showcase in my career.