Wisteria Lane's most scarily protective mum

Alfre Woodard plays Betty Applewhite on Desperate Housewives.

Alfre Woodard has embarrassing memories of when Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry offered her the role of Betty Applewhite.

"I said, 'You know, with all due respect, I haven't seen it, and I'm sorry I live under a rock'."

Thinking Cherry would give up on the idea, she was surprised when he offered to send her every episode from the first series. Woodard was busy at the time, so she was taken aback when 15 tapes arrived at her house.

But curiosity got the better of her, and she and her husband

sat up around the clock,

catching up on the drama of Wisteria Lane.

While Woodard became a Desperate Housewives fan literally overnight, Cherry had been watching her for years.

He liked her dry sense of humour and mysterious quality, not to mention her impressive CV.

The star of more than 80 films and TV shows, Woodard won her first Emmy in 1984 as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for a three-episode guest stint on Hill Street Blues.

Five years later she won again as Outstanding Guest Performer in a Drama Series for the pilot episode of L.A. Law.

In 1997, she won her third Emmy for Miss Evers' Boys, in a category with Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Stockard Channing.

And in 1997, she was named Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for The Practice. The following year she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture for Miss Evers' Boys.

As is to be expected of a woman of such repute, Woodard has a regal presence. Today, she is dressed from head to toe in flowing, gold chiffon.

She speaks theatrically, her eyes changing from narrow slits to dramatic saucers as she meanders in and out of her train of thought.

Halfway through the interview her cellphone rings - instead of ignoring it or turning it off, she apologises and takes the call.

It's her teenage daughter, Mavis, who she says later only bothers to watch Desperate Housewives for the "cute boys".

Woodard, on the other hand, liked the way Desperate Housewives "broke form", and immediately warmed to Cherry's intelligence.

She explains that this is how she always chooses roles - by selecting the material and her workmates rather than the genre.

When she was offered the part she was working on the film Take the Lead with Antonio Banderas; before that, a Broadway play.

She resents the notion the Applewhites have been called Wisteria Lane's token black family, particularly because the two other actresses Cherry considered to play Betty were white.

"When you look at the television set or the movie screen every person of colour or of a different age has to say why they are there," she protests.

"But I said to [Marc Cherry], 'Do not expect Rosa Parks here'."

After the frantic tape-watching session, her first day on the job was just as last-minute.

Cherry had not sent Woodard a script, telling her to trust her acting instincts.

Next thing, the cameras were rolling and Woodard was panicking. "I still don't know who I am - all I know is that Mehcad [Brooks, who plays Matthew] is my son. So after we shot our first scene I said, 'You know what, I really have to see Marc [Cherry] right now'.

So he came up and said, 'You're doing great'. And I said, 'What's going on?' ... He told us some things and our jaws went. I just said, 'My God'."

It was then she knew that Betty Applewhite wasn't just another fashionably dressed housewife on Wisteria Lane but a conflicted woman trying to protect her son by doing the unthinkable.

"At one point we were dancing with having Betty a little gothic but you still wanted people to like her but just be a little weary of her," says Woodard.

"And if I had known when I started out that's where I was headed, I would have just been hard to like - 'Oh, my God, I'm scared of her'."

Cherry's only words of advice to Woodard were to "play it close to the breast".

That wasn't going to be easy, considering Betty plays the piano and Woodard doesn't. So in stepped Natalie Cole's musical director to play her hand-double. Did she not consider taking lessons?

"No. I'm a social activist. I'm raising children. I volunteer at the children's schools in a big way. No, I don't have time to play the piano."

Instead, she studied the way the musician moved her body, not her fingers. "I'm a big fake," she hoots.

Perhaps, but you'd have to be a natural to follow Woodard's method. She learns her lines scene by scene while sitting in makeup.

"It would make other actors kind of nuts, but I do that with all the pictures I do. It's another thing that keeps you on your toes. It's like being in a big, crazy improv troop."

In her spare time she directs plays at a local school and writes moral skits for the children, and helps to run Artists for a New South Africa (ANSA), a nonprofit organisation working to combat HIV/Aids, advance civil and voting rights, and educate and empower youth.

"Honestly, she's a goddess," says Mehcad Brooks, who plays Betty's son, Matthew.

"She's amazing. She has taught me so much about my craft and my life, to tell you the truth, in the past year. She is irreplaceable."

"I feel like as long as you can find enough sleep for yourself you should do everything that you want to do because there is so much to be done," says Woodard.

"Family life is really important to me and social activism is a must for all of us so you can't back off that responsibility.

"And, you know, sometimes if I stretch it too much I will just crash for a day. I start to get jittery and my husband says, 'Go lay down'."

* Desperate Housewives, Monday, TV2, 8.30pm