Fans of Alfre Woodard (Betty Applewhite) will have to make a choice tonight: whether to watch the four-time Emmy winner on Desperate Housewives, see if her cast wins a Screen Actors' Guild Award for Best Ensenble or tune in to her TV movie The Water Is Wide, based on a novel by Pat Conroy.

In the film, Woodard plays a school principal dealing with a controversial new teacher on Yamacraw Island off the South Carolina coast. "This is a wonderful, beautifully shot, heartfelt picture that the whole family can watch and really get a lot from," the actress told Zap2It, adding that she hoped tonight's rerun of Desperate Housewives would not hurt viewership for The Water Is Wide.

"It's not glamorous -- and it's up against something glamorous and sexy and dishy," she noted of the movie, saying she hoped that children would watch the adaptation with their parents and talk about education. Desperate Housewives, she added, is "something that children watch, but I don't think they should. I get 6-year-olds who come up to me and say they see me on 'Desperate Housewives' when they watch it with their parents."

Though her character in The Water Is Wide is not a sympathetic figure, Woodard said that didn't bother her. "I've always felt that one of the exciting things about being an actor is that you get to build character. That's the job," she explained. "That also demands that you understand their psychology, and that is very meticulous work."

"Watching Woodard play internal conflict, her face in touching turmoil, offers the movie's greatest pleasure," wrote The Orlando Sentinel of The Water Is Wide. "She makes the waters of this inspirational drama a good deal deeper."

And The Los Angeles Times, which was less impressed with the drama overall, noted, "Any chance to watch Alfre Woodard work is a chance worth taking."

The actress also told Zap2It that she was surprised over the media hype following Desperate Housewives and was trying not to take the publicity for granted, comparing it to having made the varsity cheerleading squad: "You take it in stride, because you know if you don't make cheerleader next year, your same core group will be the only people talking to you...people are attracted to the fire shift, and that's the shift I'm riding right now."

She also said that she enjoyed acting with the other women on the show, "and we've finally gotten on track with my 'family' in the episodes we've just shot. There's some really good stuff coming up."

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