Liquid sex.

That’s how Dylan McDermott was once described by one of his costars on The Practice.
“The man,” Camryn Manheim told People magazine in 1998, “is a walking orgasm.”

How many men would love to put that on their business cards?

It’s easy to understand why Manheim — and millions of other women — get all rubbery-legged over McDermott.

Look at the guy. The ocean-blue eyes. The dark hair. The lean frame. The Mount Rushmore jaw. The manly five o’clock shadow.

McDermott doesn’t look like an actor. He looks like a walking Calvin Klein ad.

For seven mostly brilliant seasons, the 47-year-old actor played Bobby Donnell, a take-no-prisoners defense attorney on The Practice, ABC’s hit law drama and one of my favorite TV shows.

Ever.

After starring in ABC’s short-lived dramedy Big Shots (think the male version of Desperate Housewives) as a skirt-chasing CEO, McDermott is back on the small screen in the new TNT series Dark Blue, debuting Wednesday at 10 p.m.

This time he is Lt. Carter Shaw, the leader of an elite undercover cop unit working in the seedy parts of Los Angeles.

Shaw is one of those “haunted” cops. You know, he never sleeps. It doesn’t show, however. McDermott’s still looks pretty hot. No bags under his eyes. At all. Imagine what he’d look like if he got in a full eight hours of rest.

Which forced me to ask McDermott on a conference call with TV reporters if he’s the prettiest undercover cop in the history of network television.

“No, I hope not,” he says, chuckling. “I really have worked hard with Carter to make him as beat-up as I can.”

Really?

Then he’ll have to work a little harder.

Most ladies would probably agree McDermott still has that liquid sex thing going on.
Here are the highlights from Dylan’s conference call interview.

Why he took the role:

I had always been a fan of undercover cops (shows and movies). When I was a kid I read Serpico and I was fascinated by it. Then I saw the movie and I was equally fascinated. I watched Baretta when I was kid and then there was Donnie Brasco and Wiseguy. There hasn’t been a successful undercover show in quite a while, and I just thought it was the perfect time.
It’s the perfect opportunity for me to do something a little different. People were kind of used to seeing me as Bobby Donnell or some guy in a suit. I think that maybe people are hopefully ready to see me in a different light and enough time has passed where this is a radically different character.

What he learned studying real undercover cops:

I was initially struck by what they weren’t telling me and how much they were hiding, It’s not what they tell you, it’s what they don’t tell you.

His take on his character:

There’s a lot of mystery to him in terms of what’s happened to him, and I’m sure that being a police officer for many years in Los Angeles, you get corrupted doing undercover work. I think that there’s a huge toll on him and he’s had to sacrifice a big portion of himself in order to do this kind of work. The demons have caught up with him.

There’s certainly something with his wife that’s not right. Whether she’s dead or the relationship didn’t work out, we don’t quite know what happened. This is a guy who is haunted. He can’t sleep for a reason. He’s up at night because he’s haunted by so many different things in his life.

What it’s like working on a Jerry Bruckheimer production:

With Jerry you know things miraculously get done that maybe wouldn’t have gotten done with someone else. It’s no mystery why he’s successful. He surrounds himself with the very best.

Why he likes working on a cable show:

I think for an actor this is where you want to be. It feels like network television is struggling to find its identity. There’s less and less movies being made and most of them are special effects movies. So somewhere between television and movies is cable. That’s why you see so many actors flocking to cable because you get to (play) a character. Actors get something to munch on.

Why his character probably won’t have a steady love interest:

I think there’s one script where I get involved with a woman, but I’m undercover. He’s not a person who could be in a relationship. He’s got a lot of work to do before he can be in a relationship. But I think that women will definitely come and go in his life.

How he got into acting:

When I was 15 years old, (playwright) Eve Ensler, who wrote The Vagina Monologues, became my stepmother and she was that one person in my life that made an enormous difference, and I’ll never forget it. She enrolled me in an acting class. She saw something in me that she felt I could be an actor. She believed in me and she changed my life because, frankly, I don’t think that I would’ve had (thought about acting) coming from where I came from. From that moment on, I got more and more fascinated by the world and it took me a long time, but I just became obsessed with it.