Tawny Cypress, a veteran of primetime and daytime television, with appearances on ‘Third Watch’ and ‘All My Children,’ stars as Simone Deveaux on NBC’s smash hit ‘Heroes.’ Deveaux says she could tell the show was a hit as soon as she read the pilot, but didn’t necessarily imagine that she’d be a part of the it. Every part she read for was written to be played by a white woman, but as she reveals in our interview, she read well and scored a role nonetheless.

How did you discover the role of Simone Deveaux?

I actually went in for the part of Niki, and it came down to me and Ali Larter for the part. I knew they were looking for a white woman with a half-black child -- it said so in the script -- so I didn’t understand why I was going in for it. But I got along well with everybody and I gave a good read. After the audition, on the way to the airport, I got a phone call from Tim Kring, who asked me if I would take the part of Stella. Stella was her name, originally. She was a white woman from New York, a bohemian, carefree sort of character. And I said of course I would take it, then they changed it to Simone Deveaux, and made me an art dealer.

The buzz about the show is incredible. Did you think it would get this big?

A lot of scripts, as you can imagine, cross my path, and most of the time I read these scripts and it’s so boring. The reason why I went in for the part of Niki in the first place was because I read the pilot script and it was so fun. I mean, they’re written the way you see them on the screen. So when he [Nathan] does a sonic boom across the sky, it’s written that way. As soon as I read the pilot I knew that this show was very, very special.

You can’t help but notice that we haven’t really seen any black heroes yet. Did that ever make you go hmm? Or should we just stay tuned?

First of all, there’s D.L, played by Leonard Roberts, and it took him a while to get introduced but that was their goal in the first place. They didn’t want to put all of their eggs in one basket and show-off all their goods at once, so they introduce characters as they come. But I’m very proud of the show, we just won a Diversity Award, and they’ve got me – I’m a half-black half-white woman, and I’m with a Latin man and a white man, and we’ve got a white woman who is married to a black man. See, this is life, and I think they do a really good job with it. Plus, there are more characters to come. You have not seen the whole roster!

There's a new surprise on 'Heroes' every week. Can you give us any hints about what to expect next Monday?

I would say that 70% of the characters are not who you think they are. You’ll see changes in people, and people are gonna die! There’s gonna be some deaths and some really cool explosions and special effects and fun stuff. My storyline hasn’t even kicked in yet, so you’re going to see that as well.

I know we're barely half-way through the season, but have you started to consider any projects to work on in between seasons?

I’m hopefully working out a movie thing for the break. I’ve only got a couple of weeks between when we stop shooting to when we start shooting again. So hopefully I can fit something in there that’s worthwhile. I’m not going to just take some scary movie. I’d rather take a small part in a really good film than a lead role in a movie with Paris