Nia Long and Blair Underwood on Cementing Their Hollywood Legacies

The veteran actors spoke with AARP about aging gracefully in an industry that doesn’t usually celebrate getting older

Donna Freydkin,

AARP

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Published March 11, 2026

blair underwood and nia long participating in a q and a

(From left) AARP Chief Marketing Officer Anna Banks speaks with actors Blair Underwood and Nia Long on Feb. 25 at the NAACP Hollywood Bureau Symposium held at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

Roberto Hannibal

It only took 30 years.

Actors Nia Long and Blair Underwood have been crossing paths since the early 1990s. Their kids went to the same school. They said hello at pickups, promised they’d work together “someday” and went back to their careers. Long, 55, was building an enduring body of work with the films Boyz n the Hood, Love Jones and Friday and the TV series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Underwood, 61, had accumulated four decades of credits, ranging from his breakout TV role as attorney Jonathan Rollins on L.A. Law to films like Gattaca, Just Cause and Deep Impact, playing characters that deliberately pushed against what Hollywood casting directors had in mind for him.

“Someday” finally arrived in the form of Don’t Ever Wonder, an upcoming Netflix romantic drama directed by Eugene Ashe. Long and Larenz Tate, 50, anchor the film as a married couple; Underwood turns their relationship into a love triangle. It took three years to make the film. The wait was worth it.

Long and Underwood learned early that a Hollywood career is as much about what you decline as what you accept. Underwood recalls a key lesson: “I remember hearing Denzel Washington say that when I was new in the game: ‘You always have the power of no,’ ” he says. “I never forgot that.” Long arrived at the same place on her own terms. “We have to be patient with our purpose,” she said. “It doesn’t happen overnight, and it changes.”

A A R P Chief Marketing Officer Anna Banks speaking at a podium during the Ageless Ambition panel

Banks speaks during AARP’s “Ageless Ambition” panel: “People want to see stories across generations that show older characters.”

Roberto Hannibal

That instinct is the thread running through everything Long and Underwood said during the “Ageless Ambition: Thriving in Hollywood at Every Age” panel sponsored by AARP during the NAACP Hollywood Bureau Symposium held at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles on Feb. 25, part of the NAACP Image Awards. Long and Underwood spoke with AARP Chief Marketing Officer Anna Banks about craft, money and what really matters at this stage of life.

“At AARP, we are expanding the space for talented people 50 and older, including Black artists whose stories continue to shape our culture,” Banks says, pointing to the AARP Movies for Grownups platform, which fights ageism in Hollywood. “Our research shows that people want to see stories across generations that show older characters.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You two have been in the industry for decades. Did you ever think it would be AARP that finally brought you together?

Long: Aging is a part of life. And when we do it gracefully, we have so much more to contribute to humanity. It is a pleasure and an honor to be here to talk to a group of people I care about.

Underwood: We always said, “We’ve got to work together one day.” So here we are, finally.

Audience members seated in an auditorium during the Ageless Ambition panel

Audience members attend the “Ageless Ambition” panel on Feb. 25.

Roberto Hannibal

At some point in a long career, you stop chasing roles and start choosing them. When did that shift happen for you?

Underwood: Early in my career, when you’re coming up, there was that sense — you’d be in rooms like this, your name or picture would be up there, and people are buying tickets to come see you — of Did I earn it yet? Do I belong here? Forty years later … there’s just more of a sense that you’ve grown up, you’ve earned being here.

Long: My thing has always been balancing my life and motherhood with my work. There were days when I would show up at work and feel very unsure. Am I doing this right? Do I even have the energy? And then, when you start to push your children out into the world and pour back into yourself, it energizes the work. I’m having the time of my life right now. I really am. We have to be patient with our purpose. It doesn’t happen overnight.

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Was there a moment when you felt like you were getting the same roles over and over and had to reinvent yourself?

Underwood: I wanted to become an actor because of Sidney Poitier; what he represented is what I wanted to represent. So the first 10 years of my career, a lot of my roles were the good guy. And that was intentional, because Hollywood really wanted to cast us all in negative stereotypes. I wanted to go in a different direction. But literally on my last day on L.A. Law, I had auditioned for a movie called Just Cause with Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne. In that movie, I played a serial-killing pedophile. The director had never seen L.A. Law, so it didn’t matter what I’d built before. That role came right on the heels of 10 years of good guys, and it turned the tide for my career. But that was intentional. I wanted to be able to show that darker side. Now, 40 years in, you don’t really know what kind of character is going to show up. The greatest thing actors have is the element of surprise. If you can surprise an audience, that’s a gift.

Long: The women I’ve played all have core values in common, but I’m different with each character. When I step into the shoes of a Jordan or a Brandy or an Amica, or even a Katherine Jackson, my intentions are different. That’s where you have to take a little bit of control as an actor and say, “It’s written like this on the page, but I’m going to try something different.” I’m very cognizant of representing all of who we are as Black people and Black women.

Good guys versus bad guys: Which is more fun?

Underwood: Always the bad guys. Because there’s mystery. You don’t know what you’re going to get.

What can you do now as an artist that you simply couldn’t or didn’t dare do at 25?

Long: I’ve been the same pain in the butt since I started. I know the things that I know, and I’m open to learn the things that I don’t know, but my core value system hasn’t changed since I was a little girl running down the street in Brooklyn. The difference now is I don’t explain myself. We try to overexplain. You don’t have to explain. You just have to say, “This is where I am, this is what I believe and this is why.”

Underwood: My career is mostly defined by roles I said no to more than roles I said yes to. But nobody knows about the fights — the conversations and the battles you have to fight to protect your community. Especially when I came up in the ’80s, there weren’t a whole lot of us on TV, especially in dramatic roles. We were very clear that we represented a whole community, and those conversations needed to be had.

Underwood during a scene in the series “L.A. Law,” which ran from 1986 to 1994.

20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection

Have you noticed any shifts in how the industry approaches older characters and older talent?

Underwood: You see more of it only because we have more platforms. Streaming platforms need the product, and people want to see it. But it’s still challenging to get these projects made. This film, Don’t Ever Wonder, took three years to bring to fruition.

Long: I think there are more opportunities for men than there are for women. If there’s a woman in her 30s on-screen, it’s not even discussed. But if a woman over 50 had a younger man, it would become part of the storyline. It becomes an event. But I do believe things are changing. If there’s a lane for us to do it the way we want to do it, we just have to keep showing up the way we want to be seen, and then the demand changes.

What will it take to get more stories like this made?

Underwood: The ones we have have to be successful, and they have to be supported by the audience. That’s the bottom line.... You make noise, you talk about it on social media, you make clear that you want to see it. At the end of the day, it’s the audience that has to prove this can be successful.

Long: If you have a vision, speak on it. You can change minds.

This industry is very demanding. What habits or rituals keep you steady when work and personal life get overwhelming?

Long: My thoughts, my food — cooking rather than going to restaurants — exercise, even though I hate the gym. But mostly, especially when things are really coming at you, I take a minute in the morning to just be grateful. It’s my time with God, my time with myself. It doesn’t have to be an hour; it can be in the shower, when you’re brushing your teeth. It’s just connecting to Spirit in a way that you feel protected when you walk out the door. It also manages my reaction to nonsense. And I go to bed early. Don’t call me after 8:30.

Underwood: Perspective. Something as simple as never saying “I’m old.” I’m 61 right now, but it is a state of mind. There are things that start to happen to your body — things change, and you have to adjust. But the words are your foundation, and everything cascades from that. How you see yourself. Seasoned and maturing — very different things from getting old.

Blair, you’ve spoken openly about supporting your family as a caregiver. How has stepping into that role changed how you think about time, family and legacy?

Underwood: Tomorrow’s not promised. You don’t have to be 80 years old to be thinking about death. And you want to take care of your loved ones. You’ve got to put that stuff in place: wills, living trusts, putting your money in a trust so it doesn’t end up in probate with your family fighting over it. I have a friend, very successful, and I asked her, “Do you have a living trust?” No. “A will?” No. She said, “I feel like if I think about it, it’s going to encourage it to happen.” You can’t be that person.

Long: That’s part of the legacy.

Underwood: That is legacy.

Nia Long and Larenz Tate in a scene from Love Jones

Long and Larenz Tate in the 1997 film, “Love Jones.”

Everett Collection

Nia, you’ve shared how growing up in a home where money was tight shaped your mindset around security and freedom. What lessons from those early years still guide you?

Long: I always save more than I probably need to. I take care of my mom. I have a living trust, a will, a safety deposit box. I grew up in an environment where planning and making sure the family was taken care of was super important. My grandmother was a planner: Save more than you need to. Spend what you can afford to spend. Don’t get caught up in credit — it is a trick. Live below your means. And don’t be afraid to ask for more money. I don’t care what you offer me — what I want is over here, and if you don’t give me that, then I’m not doing it. It’s a daily commitment to sticking to what you want.

To close, finish this sentence: My next chapter is going to be about...

Long: Freedom.

Underwood: Harvest.

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Donna Freydkin has spent 10-plus years interviewing celebrities for major publications, and has written for a variety of outlets such as USA Today, Allure, Yahoo! and CNN covering topics such as films, family and favorite meals.