Race Winner's Secret Showbiz Past Revealed!
Just minutes before the country watched
Uchenna and
Joyce Agu dash toward the winner's mat on
The Amazing Race 7, Joyce told TV Guide that her doctor had kindly offered to do a free round of in-vitro fertilization for one last try at having a baby.
"I was in tears when I heard," says the 44-year-old, who joined the show with her husband in hopes of winning enough money for the procedure. But if the IVF fails, the couple says they'll adopt, perhaps from the Soweto orphanage they visited during the race. "Those children were so lovely," she says.
The Houston sales manager also revealed that she was once an actress (
Star Trek: The Next Generation,
Silk Stalkings). So who did she play on
TNG, which most of us agree was the best
Trek series since the original?
Ensign Gates. Just like in the picture above, she spent several episodes silently seated at the
Enterprise's controls, taking orders from Captain Picard (
Patrick Stewart). There were a few happy exceptions, Joyce points out. "In one scene, I did tai chi with Worf (
Michael Dorn) and in another, they asked me to [speak] a couple of lines when Data (
Brent Spiner) thought they were out of context for him.
"It was cool trying to be an actress, but it was tough," says Joyce, who set aside her acting bug when she moved to Texas. Why didn't she tell
Race's producers about her showbiz past? "I didn't want to be known as 'the actress' on the show." Let's hope she'll soon be known as "Mom."
Meanwhile, there's more on-camera fun in the works for Uchenna and Joyce, who will make a cameo appearance this month on CBS' longest-running soap,
Guiding Light. For details, read
Soaps News.
