For Niecy Nash-Betts, the Fear Was Motivating

Niecy Nash-Betts is serious about finding “stolen moments” in life, she said, as a balance to her busy acting schedule. And she is quick to nudge others to do the same. During a recent lunch at an Italian restaurant in Calabasas, she fired off a few date-night suggestions for a reporter who had lackluster birthday plans — maybe a couples ceramics class?

“If you need to put a battery in your back, you’re talking to the right one!” she exclaimed. Indeed her battery always seems charged. Just last month, she wrapped production on a leading role in the FX horror series “Grotesquerie,” premiering Wednesday, her latest collaboration with Ryan Murphy — and then hopped immediately on a flight to the Amalfi Coast, in Italy, where she and her wife, the musician Jessica Betts, celebrated their fourth anniversary.

Back home barely a week, she was already gearing up to film with Murphy again this month, this time as comic relief in the Hulu legal drama “All’s Fair.” A year-end Mexico vacation was already in the works, as well.

“You got to wring life out like a dirty rag,” she said as she sipped ice water, looking polished in a pink cotton gauze pantsuit, seemingly unfazed by the triple-digit temperatures scorching the San Fernando Valley. “You got to get every inch of it.”

In the past year, Nash-Betts also hosted her third season of the latest revival of “Don’t Forget the Lyrics!,” a weekly game show on Fox, and played a kindhearted confidant in the Ava DuVernay film “Origin,” her third collaboration with DuVernay after a minor part in “Selma” and her Emmy-nominated lead role in the Netflix series “When They See Us,” about the so-called Central Park Five.