Daphne Reid is running behind schedule for the interview appointment, and still she seems calm and unruffled as she walks quickly into the office in building 157 at Universal studios in Los Angeles.
"Good morning!" she sings out cheerfully, her chipper mood accentuated by the bright yellow dress she's wearing. It's a stylish entrance by a dazzlingly beautiful woman, and you fully expect the rush of activity in the room to come to a halt for a massive response by the entire staff. But strangely, no one seems to even notice.No one, that is, except for one tall, slender man - the handsome one wearing a white shirt and tie. He glances up from the detailed instructions he's been giving to a secretary, smiles warmly, and reminds her playfully, "You're late!"
For a moment the visiting TV critic from Salt Lake City is caught in the crossfire of a shared look between Reid and her husband, Tim. The shorthand communication is palpable, carrying equal parts of amusement, enchantment and affection - with just a touch of annoyance thrown in for good measure.
"Oh, you should've seen the traffic on the freeway," she explains breezily while beckoning the reporter to follow her into a conference room. "Incredible!"
Her husband chuckles and shakes his head weakly as he returns to his work. Reid, meanwhile, has already moved on, securely and confidently, indicating that such good-natured teasing is a regular fact of life in the Reid family.
"Our relationship off camera is a lot like what you see on-camera," she said, leaning back comfortably in a conference room chair. "There are great days, and days when it's hell."
Fans of CBS's critically acclaimed "Frank's Place" - all three of you - remember both sides of the relationship coin when the Reids played opposite each other in that all-too-short-lived series. And now they're getting ready to do it again in "Snoops," a new hourlong series that will premiere this fall on CBS.
"Tim and I sort of came up with the idea for this show a couple of years ago," Reid said. "We knew we worked together well, that there is this chemistry between us on the screen. And we thought, wouldn't it be nice to bring back the feeling of the `Thin Man' movie series - something light and romantic and fun?
"That's how `Snoops' evolved. We're just updating Nick and Nora."
In "Snoops" the Reids play Chance and Micki Dennis, a slightly off-beat professional couple in Washington, D.C. Not that their jobs are all that unusual, mind you - Chance is a criminology professor and Micki is the head of Protocolfor the U.S. State Department. It's just that her curiosity keeps getting them into trouble as she wants to investigate every interesting crime that comes their way.
And you just know that in Washington there are all kinds of interesting crimes.
"The focus of the show is on the relationship," said Reid, whose husband is also the show's executive producer. "It's not going to be a situation where the relationship interferes with the cases. For us, the cases interfere with the relationship."
Uh-oh. Relationship. Cases. Sounds frightfully like "Moonlighting."
But while Reid acknowledges the surface similarities between "Snoops" and "Moonlighting" - light-hearted mysteries featuring romance and razor-sharp repartee - she ultimately rejects the comparison.
"In `Moonlighting,' the relationship was not well-defined," she said. "In `Snoops,' these two people are married, and we're presenting their lives. And even though we rely on a lot of witty dialogue, we're not the bickering Bickersons. We're just married people trying to make marriage work."
It's hard to tell whether she's talking about the Dennis' - or the Reids. She flows easily from talking about her on-screen marriage to talking about her real-life marriage. That's probably partly because they both involve the same man. And because, according to Reid, they both involve a lot of work.
"Sure, there are times when you don't like your partner very much," she said, not the least bit defensively. "But if your relationship is built on love you can work your way through almost any difficulty."
Including the pressure of working together.
"People always ask if that's hard," Reid said, "and I'm never exactly sure how to respond. I mean, we've just always done it, so I don't know what it's like to be married to Tim without working together.
"The first couple of years were kind of up and down. But I think we've working out a respect for each other that comes through on screen and in our lives. That's where our message is seen - in our lives and the way we live them."
If that's so, the over-riding message of Daphne Maxwell Reid's life has to do with her commitment to the work ethic. Born to working class parents in Manhattan's west side, her childhood was so happy "I didn't know that we were poor."
But somewhere in the back of her mind, she said, "I knew that some of the things I wanted in my life my Daddy couldn't give me."
So she started to work little jobs around the neighborhood, and she learned to sew. Then when she wanted new clothes she just had to earn enough for the material.
"I got to be pretty good," she said. "And I loved to work with neat fabrics - silks, cashmeres, things like that. All through high school I was one of the best-dressed girls at the Bronx High School of Science."
She got her first taste of acting in high school when she attended a workshop by Robert Hooks, founder of the respected Negro Ensemble Company. But that was just one more fun activity to an intellectually gifted scholar who was in the process of earning a scholarship to Northwestern University to study interior design and architecture.
Even with the scholarship, however, Reid had to work her way through college. She started out as working in the school library, and she stayed there until she found out she had some other gifts that could help open doors - her looks.
"I started doing a little modeling in college," she said. "At first it didn't pay much, but it was fun."
Then she got a couple of TV commercials, and the checks started rolling in.
"They just kept coming," she said, laughing at the memory. "I decided that that was a pretty good way to earn a living."
So in between her studies, getting married, having a baby and being elected the first black homecoming queen at Northwestern, she continued modeling and acting in commercials and industrial films. By the time she graduated (with a 3.75 GPA), she had acted in Robert Conrad's "The Duke" and was sure that acting was what she wanted to do with her life.
Her first marriage crumbled, and after her divorce she moved to California to pursue an acting career. Hollywood didn't exactly pound her door down at first, but she did manage to keep busy with guest roles on shows like "A Man Called Sloane," "The A-Team" and "Hill Street Blues." And she got re-acquainted with an actor she had met in Chicago a couple of years earlier - Tim Reid.
"We bumped into each other and were going to have a drink together," she said. "That five minute drink has lasted for 10 years."
The couple performed together in "WKRP in Cincinnati," "Simon & Simon" and in "Frank's Place," the series that taught Reid that the networks "ain't interested in half-hour art."
And now they're together - again - in "Snoops."
"CBS seems to like to see us together," Reid said. "And that's OK with us because we really do enjoy working together. Our relationship seems to thrive on it."
As long as she isn't slowed by that incredible L.A. traffic too often.