Second wind for Daly

Calgary Sun - May 9, 2000

By TYLER McLEOD

Tyne Daly is not happy about starring in another primetime series. Rather, she's overjoyed to be co-starring in one.

"I'm not very good at being famous. I tried it for a while, I didn't like it too much," Daly tells the Sun.

Daly appears with Amy Brenneman in CBS' Judging Amy Tuesday nights.

"This one is nice because Amy has to take all the heat -- I just get to do the acting," she says.

Not that the actor is complaining about the fortunes of her rookie hit, of course.

"Oh, absolutely delighted. It always feels better to make a success than a stinker. I've been acting a long time and I've done both."

Judging Amy, being the season's highest-rated new drama, qualifies as a success. Daly won three Emmys for Cagney & Lacey and another for her work on Christy. Yet Amy has yielded instant gratification.

It should finish the season in the Nielsens' top 20 -- something Cagney & Lacey only did in the third of seven seasons.

"This one here is a big deal. I've never had a show that took off like this. Cagney & Lacey had a very rocky run. We were cancelled three times," Daly recalls.

"Christy never caught on, although I think it was very good show and it has a place in my heart."

In Amy's highly rated premiere, a big city lawyer (Brenneman) took a post as a family court judge in Connecticut following her divorce. Amy and her daughter also moved in with her highly opinionated mother Maxine, played by Daly.

"I am mostly hired to play women," Daly observes jokingly. "I played an eight year-old black boy once on the stage. They don't let you do that on television."

Daly says she doesn't choose roles based on politics, but is proud of the three CBS series she has worked on.

The groundbreaking police drama Cagney & Lacey was a byproduct of the women's lib movement and Christy targeted young girls growing up post-Little House on the Prairie. Judging Amy, meanwhile, centres on a single mother and three generations of women.

"We can never give a 360-degree view of all women, but we can present little snippets. That opportunity is always swell."

Tonight's episode, "Gray vs. Gray," has Amy presiding over a murder case in which the main witness, a dying boy, happens to be a ward of Maxine.

It promises to be tense sweeps story. However, Daly prefers the Judging Amy episodes when mother and daughter interact at home rather than work.

"I don't want it to turn into a show that's about a judge and a social worker," she says, adding that she prefers episodes centring on a simple family story.

"Those are the ones I like," Daly says. "Especially the generational ones between Amy and me and the little girl.

"Those feel the purest."


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