Golden Brooks

By Sam Jemielity

WHO IS SHE?
This actress' name, like her future, is Golden. Having studied at the University of California-Berkeley and Sarah Lawrence, the brainy Brooks easily tosses off references to smart people whose names are hard to spell, like Nietzsche. So how did someone this smart also get a great sense of humor, free-spirited attitude and unapologetic sexiness? Who cares? This curvaceous cutie—whose grandmother was also named Golden—is money.

WHAT HAS SHE DONE?
Brooks plays streetwise but straight-laced Maya alongside Diana Ross' daughter Tracee Ellis Ross on the hit UPN comedy Girlfriends (Mondays, 9:30 ET), in which four twentysomething African American women talk careers, politics, family, friendship and...there's something else. Oh yeah, lots of sex. She also starred as the sexually brazen bartender on TV's Linc's and as the sexy, no-nonsense movie exec in the digital film Timecode. She soon will be seen as a plague victim in the upcoming big-screen sci-fi film Impostor.

WHY DO WE CARE?
She's got beauty, brains and talent, and she's not afraid to take on Spike Lee. For her youthful penchant for running naked on the beach, Brooks wins our Oscar for sexiest newcomer.

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PLAYBOY: Linc's was sometimes called "the black Cheers," and now many reviewers refer to Girlfriends as the black Sex and the City. What do you think of that comparison?

BROOKS: It bothers me. It shows you that African Americans have a long way to go in terms of showing who they are without their color in America. It's almost like we're playing catch-up to white people. It's so sad that it's so segregated that a black show has to play second fiddle to quote-unquote a white show or be compared to a white show in order to get some public recognition.

PLAYBOY: How is it different from Sex and the City?

BROOKS: I don't think the show's anything like Sex and the City, other than that it's about four women and we deal with issues that involve sex. But we also deal with racial issues, and class issues, and health issues. My character wants to get pregnant, and can't, because she has this fibroid, this little tumor that a lot of African American women get on their uterus. It's just a publicity gimmick to compare it to Sex and the City.

PLAYBOY: Do you and your girlfriends in real life talk about sex like the women on the show?

BROOKS: We do. It's funny, because Spike Lee was quoted saying the show was unrealistic and black women in reality don't sit around talking about sex. I wish I knew when Spike Lee was a black woman. He doesn't know. Of course, all women sit around with their girlfriends and talk about sex. We talk about sex, hair, bunions...menstrual cramps. Everything from A to Z.

PLAYBOY: You had one show about a toe-sucking fetish. Did that come from your real-life experiences?

BROOKS: No, unfortunately not. [Laughs] Although I love toe-sucking men. That wasn't my brilliant idea.

PLAYBOY: Is that the weirdest sex fetish you've heard of?

BROOKS: I've heard of stranger sex fetishes....

PLAYBOY: Such as....

BROOKS: [Laughs] Like, this'll be the first sentence of the story. "Golden Brooks loves men who—." This is kind of boring, but I'll say it anyway. My old boyfriend—this wasn't really him having a fetish in terms of my body—but my old boyfriend used to love for me to be in bobby socks. Little white bobby socks. I don't know what that was, maybe a schoolgirl fantasy or something.

PLAYBOY: So any personal fetish you have?

BROOKS: Not really.

PLAYBOY: Send you some bobby socks?

BROOKS: Yeah, send me some bobby socks. Some really warm, fuzzy bobby socks.

PLAYBOY: Your character on Girlfriends is the moral, married one who tries to keep her single friends from doing stupid or slutty things. What character on the show is most like you?

BROOKS: I think I'm more like Lynn, the student one. The natural, idealistic one. I think I'm a cross between my character, Maya, and Lynn.

PLAYBOY: Now, Lynn's the one who's into group sex?

BROOKS: Group sex, but really free, always about the cause. Free love, very political, and a little bit of a contradiction in ways. And I'm always doing something kind of "off." Because I can preach that black women need to present ourselves in a dignified light, because we've been represented as slutty or promiscuous. But yeah, I'll pose in a really short miniskirt, and maybe show cleavage. I love feeling sexy, and being sexy, and looking sexy. And I don't think that doing that means that I'm giving up what I believe in in terms of how I want to be perceived.

PLAYBOY: Hey, no argument here. And back to the free-loving, group sex thing—just so there's no misunderstanding with our readers.

BROOKS: Well, I'm not into group sex, no, I'm not into group sex. Lynn is a little bit of a tease. Have you ever seen her with a man? No. It's just always talk. I mean, I love black men, white men, Asian men—it doesn't matter.

PLAYBOY: Just one at a time, right?

BROOKS: Just one at a time. Exactly.

PLAYBOY: On one show, you all came up with a dream partner. Who's your dream guy?

BROOKS: I love musicians. My dream guy would be either a musician or a poet who's independently wealthy.

PLAYBOY: Well, there's a lot of poets like that. You sell one sonnet, and you're set for life—.

BROOKS: Oh, yeah. Omigosh, you should move to the hills. It's a very lucrative business.

PLAYBOY: Anyway, back to the dream guy....

BROOKS: Really, my dream person is someone with passion, who really believes in something, who has no inhibitions. I can't stand someone who's so aware of everything he does. Someone who isn't afraid to look goofy. I'm not afraid to do something like that. As an actor, I don't think you should be. I'm a free spirit, and I need a man in my life who's like that. I don't want just a loose cannon, I do want someone who has some stability. Just someone who is open and has as much energy as I do.

PLAYBOY: What was the silliest moment you've ever had?

BROOKS: This was long ago; I lived in Berkeley and I was young and free. My boyfriend and I ran across the beach completely naked. Everyone was staring at us.

PLAYBOY: During the day?

BROOKS: Yeah. He dared me, and of course I had to prove how brave I was. He had to do it with me. He was like that, he would do anything.

PLAYBOY: What's the most outrageous thing you've done to get a guy, besides the beach stunt?

BROOKS: Well, I already had the guy then....

PLAYBOY: Well, you probably had a few more guys on the beach interested in you after that.

BROOKS: Oh yeah, oh, definitely. [Laughs] It's not very often that you see a chocolate woman running across the beach stark nude.

PLAYBOY: Is that the proper word now?

BROOKS: Oh, chocolate? I could say it, but I don't think you could say it. [Laughs]

PLAYBOY: I'll keep it out of the headline.

BROOKS: That's right, honey. You don't want the NAACP coming after you.

PLAYBOY: Are you always dating someone?

BROOKS: That's me. I'm that girl. I left Berkeley and had a committed boyfriend. I moved to New York and met someone the second month. I'm always the girl with a boyfriend, but yet I'm always breaking up with him and getting back with him and breaking up with him. I don't know if that'll ever change.

PLAYBOY: Your current boyfriend must hope that it will, if you have a boyfriend.

BROOKS: I'm kinda seeing someone. I'm really into spending a lot of time with someone. I don't want a man living with me yet, but the guy I'm seeing spends a lot of time at my place. Almost marriage, but not really. I don't like him to spend the night either. I like him to stay here, and we watch TV, we watch movies, dance around, eat Indian food. But when I get really sleepy, I want him to go.

PLAYBOY: Any insane pickup lines you've gotten?

BROOKS: Yeah, on my birthday. I was running late to meet my friend at a restaurant. This tall, lanky, dreaded black guy—real cute—says, "You'd look really, really, really good in my clothes." I'm like, "Uuuh, OK." He said, "I'm a designer. You should let me design something for you. We can do the whole fitting, the whole nine. You can come to my loft downtown." I thought it was kind of interesting.

PLAYBOY: So, did it work?

BROOKS: No no no no nuh no. Cuz I was seeing this guy, you know.

PLAYBOY: Otherwise, you might have?

BROOKS: I may have. It could have worked. It could have happened. He seemed really smart. Can't stand a dumb guy.

PLAYBOY: Do you think most actors are dumb?

BROOKS: No, but I do think sometimes people feel you don't have to be knowledgeable on different subjects other than acting if you're really good-looking and you're coming here to do one thing. That you don't have to know about Nietzsche or James Joyce or whomever. But I think it behooves you to know those things. No one wants to work with a dumb actor.

PLAYBOY: What sex plot on Girlfriends was the most fun to do?

BROOKS: The Joan character was dating a sex addict, and it was horrible. She said he had no rhythm. And all the girls were talking about what we liked in bed, our fetishes. My character said she enjoyed her husband whispering her name in her ear and keeping her socks on when they had sex.

PLAYBOY: The bobby socks....

BROOKS: Honey, it came back. Cyclical!

PLAYBOY: What were the other women's fetishes?

BROOKS: Toni, the sort of promiscuous one, talked about how she wanted a man to ride her top to bottom.

PLAYBOY: I don't even know what that means.

BROOKS: I don't get that either. I don't really get it. [Laughs] You know, look. I don't really remember. But Joan was complaining that this sex addict wasn't good in bed, and how was that possible, because he was supposed to be a sex addict. But he was abstaining from sex for a long time. So my character says, "Maybe he was just rusty." And they're like, "There's just some things that shouldn't be referred to as rusty."

Photo: Getty