Grant Show is best known as Jake Hanson (1992-1997) in the Beverly Hills, 90210 spinoff, Melrose Place. He has since maintained a place in primetime making appearances on hit series such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Burn Notice, Big Love, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Six Feet Under and Swingtown.

Show has acted in a number of stage productions including On the Waterfront and The Glass Menagerie. In 2012, he starred in the movie The Possession along with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick.

"I was sent the script by my agent almost a year and a half ago now and just really loved it. I had met Marc (Cherry) about a year before on another pilot that he did and liked him a lot. I went in and we read together, and it was just kind of a good fit."

Currently, the talented actor can be seen in the new Marc Cherry (Desperate Housewives) primetime soap opera Devious Maids that premieres on Sunday, June 23, 2013 on Lifetime. The series centers on four Latina maids working in the homes of Beverly Hills’ wealthiest and most powerful families and the cast includes Ana Ortiz, Dania Ramirez, Roselyn Sanchez, Judy Reyes, Edy Ganem, Susan Lucci, Mariana Klaveno, Drew Van Acker and Tom Irwin.

Show is married to actress Katherine LaNasa (Deception, Two and a Half Men, Big Love).

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Grant, thanks for taking the time today.

Grant Show: Well, I appreciate your helping us get the word out about Devious Maids.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Another primetime soap created by Marc Cherry.

Grant Show: It’s Desperate Housewives with maids in Beverly Hills.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Perhaps with some Downton Abbey thrown in?

Grant Show: Oh, yeah, a little Upstairs Downstairs.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Is the show filmed partly in Atlanta?

Grant Show: It’s filmed all in Atlanta. Well, the pilot was shot in Los Angeles in Beverly Hills, but as most shows are doing nowadays, we got a better deal in Atlanta as far as our taxes and stuff like that, so we shoot out there now.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): How did you become interested in the series?

Grant Show: I was sent the script by my agent almost a year and a half ago now and just really loved it. I had met Marc (Cherry) about a year before on another pilot that he did and liked him a lot. I went in and we read together, and it was just kind of a good fit.

Marc also needed another Melrose Place good luck charm (laughs). He had Doug Savant and Marcia Cross on Desperate Housewives, and he needed another Melrose Place actor to launch the new show.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): So you enjoy working with Marc Cherry?

Grant Show: I really do. He’s great. He really has his thumb on the pulse of something about America. I thought it was just about suburban America, but he has done it again with this show. It is really delicious.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): The premise has been criticized for perpetuating offensive or negative stereotypes of Latina women as maids. What are your comments about that?

Grant Show: I suppose if you don’t watch the show, that’s what it is going to look like, but if you watch the show, they’re not stereotypes. They’re people. They just happen to be maids, and they just happen to be Latina. They’re just people, and the show is from their point of view. They’re fully rounded whole characters that we can fall in love with and empathize with.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Basically just about working women trying very hard to get ahead in this world.

Grant Show: That’s true. In this crazy Beverly Hills world. I mean, these are crazy people in Beverly Hills that they work for. I don’t know whether I’d call it Devious Maids. I think it may be “Devious People That Maids Work for.”

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): You play Spence Westmore, and your wife is portrayed by Mariana Klaveno. Tell me about those characters.

Grant Show: Spence is a daytime soap opera actor. His wife is becoming a movie star. Spence is just really sweet. He’s a good guy and one of the few good people on the show. He’s just trying to get by, to provide for his family and just happens to be an actor. His wife, on the other hand, is very ambitious and becoming famous and is not the nicest person in the world. She kind of takes it out on Spence that he’s not as famous as she would like him to be.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): You haven’t known many actors like that, have you?

Grant Show: (laughs) None. Not a single one. They say, “You’re not as famous as I am! Go away!” I’ve actually lost friends because they got more famous than me. They couldn’t associate with me anymore.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Grant, I’m thinking that Spence will probably stray from his marriage and have an affair with Susan Lucci’s character Genevieve Delatour.

Grant Show: I’ve heard that before actually! I’m not sure that Spence has enough money to get together with Genevieve.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): I thought the scene in the pilot with Susan underneath the bed was priceless.

Grant Show: Oh, Susan’s great in the show! She’s so adorable and so willing to make fun of herself. You just love this character that she plays.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Had you ever worked with her before?

Grant Show: No, but back in the day when I was doing Ryan’s Hope, we crossed each other’s paths several times. So when we first met at the first table read, we both looked at each other like, “I think we met quite a few years ago.”

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Within the first ten minutes of the pilot episode, there was a murder. What can possibly follow that?

Grant Show: Well, there are twists and turns … a lot goes on. Almost everybody gets involved in that murder in some form or another. We’ll find out in the end, I think, who did it before we move on to the next season, but it’s pretty dark. It’s pretty dark.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Believe it or not, I do remember you from Ryan’s Hope. I believe that Christian Slater was there at the same time.

Grant Show: Yes he was.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): You two had a storyline.

Grant Show: With Yasmine Bleeth. Yasmine and I lived together for three years.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Did you feel like because you were a soap actor, you were not taken seriously?

Grant Show: Oh, are any actors taken seriously? Really? I mean, we’re actors after all.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): But you did choose to leave the daytime drama.

Grant Show: I left Ryan’s Hope because I didn’t like the work I had to do every day. It’s incredibly difficult to do. It was challenging, but it wasn’t challenging in the way that I would’ve liked to be challenged. One of the things I like about acting is to be exploring myself and other kinds of human conditions, and on a soap opera, you really don’t have time to do that.

You really just have to try to get the words out and hit your marks and then unfortunately, the writers don’t have time to do that. It’s really plot driven. It’s not really character driven. There are characters, but the stories aren’t about how those characters evolve. The stories are about what those characters do to each other. In nighttime television or certainly nighttime soaps, you really get to explore that. It’s really character driven. It’s much less plot driven. It’s much more about what happens to these characters and where they go.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): So Melrose Place was different?

Grant Show: Melrose Place was different because it was funny. Devious Maids is the same thing. It’s funny. It doesn’t take itself so seriously which allows you to kind of do a whole lot more.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): You were basically shirtless for most of the Melrose Place episodes. Were you comfortable in the role of being a “hottie?”

Grant Show: Sure. I’m even more comfortable now. I say, “Let me take my shirt off!”

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Were your parents interested in show business? I read that they left Detroit and moved to California.

Grant Show: No. My mother, father, aunts, uncles and grandparents on my father’s side all wanted to immigrate to Australia together back around 1965. They packed up the cars and drove out to California and figured they’d get jobs so they could save up enough money to get a boat to Australia, but when we got to California, they loved it so much, they just decided to stay.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Why did you want to become an actor?

Grant Show: Honestly, I did a bunch of plays in high school just for fun and had planned on being a pilot but in trying to do that realized I did not want to do that. Doing the things you needed to do in becoming a pilot, I realized it wasn’t the job I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I kind of didn’t know what I wanted to do and was searching around for something that would make me happy. I did a little community theater play, and while I was doing that, I thought, “This makes me happy. I like this. I can do this for the rest of my life. Let me see if I can get someone to pay me to do this.”

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): And it’s still making you happy?

Grant Show: Yeah. I love it. I love my job.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): You are married to an actress. Are there any challenges in a marriage with two actors?

Grant Show: It is so great. She’s such a wonderful actress. She is so good that it has done nothing but make me a better actor. We help each other all the time. There are no challenges. I see no challenges.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): And no jealousies?

Grant Show: No. We both know what we do.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Have you planned that special one-year anniversary celebration yet?

Grant Show: Not yet, but it’s starting to weigh on me. What should I do? One year is paper, isn’t it?

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Yes it is. I’m sure you’ll come up with the perfect celebration. I see that you use Twitter and that you are (@GrantNoShow). Is that an inside joke?

Grant Show: My golf buddies call me that (laughs).

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Do you use Facebook also?

Grant Show: Just Twitter, and I’m not really good at that. I have a Facebook fan page, and I think my Twitter goes through it, but I’m really bad at the social media thing. I’m 51, come on! Do I really have to do that? Ugh! I’m kind of into the Instagram though. I just started doing that, and I’m a much more visual person anyway. So I think I’ve Instagrammed more in the last week than I’ve Tweeted in the last month.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): What do you and Katherine enjoy doing during down time?

Grant Show: We just bought a house in the Marina, three houses off the beach, and it’s a wreck. We’re going to be spending the next year redoing that. She’s got a design business. As a matter of fact, her last house was just photographed, and it made the cover of Cottages & Bungalows Magazine. She’s really good at what she does, so we’ll be spending the next year doing that. I play a lot of golf as well, and I’m trying to get her involved in golf.

Melissa Parker (Smashing Interviews Magazine): Any upcoming projects?

Grant Show: I’m doing an episode of The Exes for TV Land. Other than that, I’ve been pretty much tied to Devious Maids the last year and a half.

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