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The Real Hartford Might Stand Up On 'Amy' CBS's "Judging Amy" is about to hold court in Hartford.
Thank star, executive producer and Glastonbury native Amy Brenneman, to a large degree, for that.
"Certainly, she's front and center," says Joseph Stern, who, along with Barbara Hall and Brenneman, is an executive producer of the drama that became last season's highest rated new drama. (It finished No. 19 for the season.)
Despite being set in Hartford, as many know, the show has never actually filmed in the city. Pasadena, Calif., and a couple of Hollywood sets, where it seems to be forever fall, have been standing in for the real thing.
Brenneman, who plays single mom and Hartford Judge Amy Gray, a role in part inspired by the real life of her mother, has long been talking about a working visit to Hartford.
And now, the producers of the series have confirmed, the show will be filming in Hartford from Sept. 24 to 29, bringing several principal cast members, including Brenneman and Tyne Daly, who plays her mother, Maxine.
Cast and crew will be working on as many as 10 scenes to be used in four or five episodes for the show's second season. The scenes have yet to be written. But the producers have zeroed in on several sites.
Joseph Stern, an executive producer of the show, told The Courant Tuesday: "We went out and took a lot of pictures. And actually Amy videotaped a lot of the stuff, so it's sort of a potpourri of this and that."
The trip is important on several levels to the show, and not without its challenges.
"What we're trying to do is kind of condense it and make some decisions," Stern says. "I wouldn't call it a handicap, but unlike a Chicago or New York or New Orleans or wherever, there aren't a lot of recognizable landmarks. So what we want to try and do is to get outside, to get by the river there, and maybe a restaurant by the water, and maybe shoot something more working class to get more of an urban feeling."
On the list of shooting sites: the Old State House, the Capitol building, Constitution Plaza, the Riverfront Recapture parks, the Supreme Court building, Broad Street and a view of the Hartford skyline from East Hartford.
The series, which is broadcast Tuesday nights at 10, is expected to return Oct. 3, although that date is not as yet official.
Mayor Mike Peters, according to Stern, will be visiting the "Judging Amy" set in Los Angeles July 19.
"Because we go on the air Oct. 3," Stern says, "we're thinking that the Hartford stuff will start to come in around episode four through nine. We'll try to shoot a couple of scenes for each episode.''
"I think what's important here is we get the show out a little bit and make it more expansive. I think heretofore it's been a little interior."
And not very Hartford.
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