Who is Toukie Smith and why are people talking about her?

Ebony, May, 1990 by Laura B. Randolph

Who Is TOUKIE SMITH

TOUKIE's gone Hollywood.

The former New York supermodel breezes into Chianti's a chic L.A. eatery, blowing kisses at the waiters and electrifying the air. With her leopard print Patrick Kelly coat ("Honey, I have the last dress Patrick ever made"), black miniskirt ("I didn't lose 45 pounds for nothing, baby"), and mass of honey-blonde hair, there's no mistaking it: the newest start of NBC's hit comedy 227 has arrived. And from the moment her thigh-high suede boots hit the floor, even the seen-it-all L.A. dinner crowd is more than a little awed by her presence.

Toukie scarcely notices the stares.

"Baby, I come from a family of women who, when they went to cabarets, their dresses matched their hair and their hair matched their shoes," she exclaims. "Look, I've had my hair black, pink, orange, white and blue. I grew up around women with style, honey, and they taught it to me."

While Toukie may be a newcomer to Hollywood, she's hardly a stranger to the spotlight. Long before she hit prime-time, she was a limelight veteran, primarily because of her close relationships with the rich and famous.

As the sister of the late, internationally acclaimed designer Willi Smith and the longtime companion of media-shy superstar Robert De Niro, Toukie's private life has been a constant, almost obsessive, source of interest to the media--and a source of great irritation to Toukie. "Baby, when people start asking me about my private life, I have an answer," she says snapping her fingers and drawing a Z in the air. "I say, 'Baby, do you know what private means? Do you know how to spell it: P-R-I-V-A-T-E, and that's with a capital P.'"

Born Doris Smith in Philadelphia 35 years ago, Toukie spent her 20s show-casing style with a capital S. Along with her better-known brother, Toukie used her show-stopping flair to build a big-time, big-bucks modeling career. By the end of the '70s, she was one of the most talked-about models in the industry. So much so that, in 1978 Bloomingdales named her its favorite model over a throng of blue-eyed, blond-haired competitors.

More than a decade later, Toukie again found herself face-to-face with blue-eyed competition--Hollywood style. Since she was a kid, she'd dreamed of being an actress, though she'd never pursued it. Instead, since leaving modeling in the early '80s, she'd made a living by indulging another passion--cooking--and running her own catering company in New York. By 1987, though, her culinary passion lost out to her acting ambitions. She closed "Toukie's Taste," hired an agent and followed her mother's advice: "She always told us to have a dream, and no matter what the obstacles, never let anybody take it from you."

In a made-for-the-movies move, Toukie couldn't have followed that advice any better when she auditioned for her first TV role, playing Sheena Easton's assistant on Miami Vice. Not only did she lack any prior television credits, she knew, going into the audition, that casting executives were looking for a different type. "That role was written for a White, British anorexic, honey," she recalls. "Now, do I look like any of those things? No way. But, girlfriend, who got the part?"

Soon after Vice folded, she landed a five-year contract playing Eva Rawley, 227's artist-in-residence. When she heard that she had been given the part, she and her bulldog, Rufus, caused a mini riot in the L.A. airport. "Right before Rufus and I got on the plane I called my agent to see if she'd heard anything," she says. "When she told me I got it, I was so excited, I started screaming and jumping up and down. Rufus got so excited he started jumping all over me and the airport police thought he was attacking me."

Much as she may detest talking about it, Toukie's private life has been the source of immense anguish to her in the recent past. Within a two-year period, she lost her mother to cirrhosis of the liver, her brother to AIDS and her baby to a miscarriage. "I felt a total sense of loss. I mean, how could I not?" she asks, briefly suspending her normally unshakable rule against discussing her private life. "My mother was an alcoholic. Before she died, I used to sing to her every morning. I wanted her to know I was there for her. She was the person who taught Willi and me to dream."

On the heels of her mother's loss, just one year later, Toukie found herself having to say yet another heart-breaking goodbye. This time it was to Willi, her brother, who died of AIDS in 1987. His loss was particularly heart-breaking since neither she nor Willi even knew he had AIDS. (After a trip abroad, he was told he'd contracted a form of bacterial dysentery.)

One night, Willi was feeling particularly bad and Toukie took him to the hospital. Three days later he was dead. When she heard the news, something inside Toukie died too. "Willi and I were so close, and I mean from the time we were kids," she muses. "We dreamed together. We used to put on fashion shows in the living room. Willi would make my gowns out of sheets. Honey, I had some sheet gowns. He made my sixth grade graudation dress. I still have it--and everything else he ever made for me." At his funeral, Toukie did more than grieve. She sang to Willi. "Willi's favorite songs were, "Youhre All I Need" and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." That's what I sang, cause that's what was real for me."