A black character player of numerous period TV miniseries, usually cast as mature, overly proper, stylish women, Olivia Cole is perhaps best recalled for her Emmy-winning turn as Mathilda, wife of Chicken George (Ben Vereen) and great-grandmother of Alex Haley on the famed miniseries "Roots" (ABC, 1977). Her other miniseries leads have included playing Maggie Rogers, the head maid at the Executive Mansion in "Backstairs at The White House" (1979), and Miss Sophie, the waspish, snoopy arbiter of morality aghast that lesbians are afoot in "The Women of Brewster Place" (ABC, 1989) and its 1990