Tyne Daly shares her thoughts on "Judging Emmy"

Entertainment Tonight - September 8, 2000

With five Emmy® statuettes and 11 nominations to her credit, TYNE DALY shares her thoughts on "Judging Emmy."

ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT: Where are all of your Emmys?

TYNE DALY: The Emmys are at my mom's house on a shelf. She took them off the piano because they annoyed my siblings so much. [laughter] My kid brother TIMMY (DALY) just got ROBBED! I really was hoping for a nomination for him for "Execution of Justice," which was, I thought, a wonderful film.

ET: Were you expecting this nomination for "Judging Amy"?

DALY: No. I never expect things like that because it's bad "sess," you know, ill luck.

ET: You're not blasé about having won so many?

DALY: No, no. Because what they mean is that there is, first of all, some kind of peer approval. As you know with the Emmys, actors vote for actors and directors vote for directors and writers vote for writers, and all that. So it means that my act is still working for people who do it. And that's important to me. And it also means that maybe I can keep on acting for a while. You can always take them and shake them in people's faces and say, "Remember me, I know how to act."

ET: Does this mean that for every television series that you've had, you've been nominated for an Emmy? Or is there a series in there that I don't know?

DALY: That's true. No, there's not a series you don't know. There's a couple that were supposed to be series, and you know, I went home and did serious prayer about their not going, and I got answered for that.

ET: You're nominated in the Supporting Actress category this year. Could you talk about the category?

DALY: Well, I've always been a supporting actor in my own opinion. I think that that's an actor's job. I support first the writer, then the director and then my colleagues. I don't have a lot of fun acting alone. I actually tried it a couple of seasons ago in New York. I did a one-woman play that came out of a workshop in Sundance. It was five different women, and it was 70 minutes on the stage by myself. And my mother, who is a very wise woman of the theater, had said to me a long time ago, "Never do a play by yourself." And, although, it was really interesting to accomplish those women, I didn't like it. It wasn't any fun. There wasn't anybody to bounce off of. There wasn't anybody to go have a drink with after the show. [laughs] There wasn't the feeling of company or partnership. I've always had great luck in partners -- SHARON (GLESS), JOHNNY CARLIN and now AMY (BRENNEMAN).

ET: I remember when you won year after year for "Cagney & Lacey" and Sharon didn't. I remember the relief the year she won, how happy were you for her?

DALY: She said the funniest thing. She got up and said, "Tyne Daly's the most relieved woman in the room." [laughs]

ET: Is this easier this year because you're not up for the same award as Amy?

DALY: Probably. The best scenario would be if we both win the prize. And then the next best would be if she won the prize, because it's her show. I'm fairly convinced that this year the prize belongs to NAN MARCHAND, who did spectacular work, and the best work on television for a woman in that category, and was overlooked last year.

The first time I was nominated for an Emmy, which was long before "Cagney & Lacey," it was me and Anna -- PATTY DUKE -- Astin, MARIETTE HARTLEY and EVA LA GALLIENE. Well, it was the Eva La Gailliene prize, you know, come on, let's be serious. She was a grand old woman and she'd done lots and lots of work, and she could still toddle across the stage and grab the thing. [laughter]

There's a category that I refer to as the "GOA Award." It's called the "Grand Old Actor Award." And I want that one too, of course. The Grand Old Actor Award has great respect in it.

ET: Do you know what episodes were submitted for the Emmys?

DALY: That's changed, too. In the olden days -- I mean back in the 1900s-- [laughter] the producer used to put you up for these shows. They'd pick it out, because they were the producer, and they'd put it up and that was it. And then came the thing that the actors had to put their own stuff up. You had to actually fill out a form to nominate yourself. And now comes you're supposed to pick your own stuff.

The way the Academy has changed is distressing to me. I rather thought the Emmys were more about merit than either the Tonys or the Oscars® because you were sure that whoever was voting had actually looked at the product. In the movies, how could you check? The Tonys give out tickets for the Tony Committee. But I know for sure that a lot of people give those tickets away.

But the Emmys® were designed so that there was a nomination process. Then the Blue Ribbon Panel -- which I served on one year, so that's why I know-- sits down and looks at the work all together in a room. And you know that they've considered it. Now, Joe Stern, our producer, says to me, "Well, what scenes do you want to send?" Because now they're sending out tapes and they're not even sending whole shows, they're sending scenes. Which seems to me to skew the process of picking out what you do, because, you know, an actor tells the story from beginning to end. You should watch the whole bleedin' thing, it seems to me. So that's a little distressing, because it's, again, part of the kind of "bits-ing up" of attention.

ET: Which episode were you most proud of this past year?

DALY: Well again, if it's a series -- it's like saying, "What chapter in Oliver Twist is the best chapter? I mean it's a series. That guy was writing a series for magazines. It was a serial and all those books were written that way, practically. So, I'm loath to sort of pick one out. It's like, again, they used to ask me, "What's your favorite number in Gypsy? Gee whiz. There are seven wonderful numbers that Rose gets to sing and they are fantastic songs. It's a whole thing. I'm loath to cut it up in that way. Sorry.


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