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The Other Woman Behind Judge Amy Hall, an executive producer of the family/courtroom drama with Brenneman, is the woman who took Brenneman's Hartford-based concept for the show, developed it using some of her own life experience and brought it to prime-time fruition.
Where Brenneman radiates giddy enthusiasm, Hall - a writer/producer whose TV credits include "Northern Exposure" - conveys a sense of quiet, determined control.
The hourlong series finished its first season as a solid hit, and Brenneman earned an Emmy nomination. Since the star also shares executive-producer credit and ownership of the show, the direction of the second season (which begins Tuesday night at 10) might seem like it's up for grabs.
"Different people are in charge of different things," Hall says during a recent visit to her L.A. office. "And as long as I'm in charge of the writing, you know, a lot of stuff is decided by that."
Hall has written for some of the best shows television has had to offer, including "Moonlighting," "I'll Fly Away," "Northern Exposure" and "Chicago Hope." She's also a novelist whose latest work, "A Summons to New Orleans" (Simon & Schuster, $23), draws on the most painful chapter in Hall's personal history - a violent rape that almost took her life in 1997 and the subsequent trials that threatened her sanity and soul.
Perhaps that's why "Judging Amy" - even with its sardonic flashes of humor - is, by nature, so serious in texture and tone.
"When you undergo something like this, you can be diminished by it, or you can grow from it," says Hall. "So I just looked at it as an opportunity for growth, and it really has been. Among other things, I think now: 'If it can't kill you, it doesn't really impress me too much.'"
That kind of quiet strength forged from pain reverberates through the character of Judge Amy Gray (Brenneman) and is especially evident in the program's season opener.
With the family dealing with the aftermath of an explosion involving Amy's brother Vincent (Dan Futterman), the judge - already under intense professional pressure - wrestles with her emotions and human frailties as well as those of her highly opinionated mother, Maxine (Tyne Daly).
The series will mine that territory this season, digging deeper into the often maddening lode of family dynamics.
"I think it's going where I think all of our relationships with our parents go," says Hall, "which is basically nowhere."
Hall guides a show where Brenneman exercises not only star power but executive-producer credit. The drama also started as a TV personification of the Glastonbury native's real-life mother and judge, Frederica Brenneman, and then merged with Hall's life as a single parent. So the opportunities for discord would seem many and potentially unmanageable. "A lot of that process stuff got ironed out last year," Brenneman says. "Ultimately this character is neither one of us. Or the writers.
"I would say for the most part I have not become her stand-in. There are a couple of very specific issues [on which we differ]. We had really lively discussions about chauvinism - because I know that's something Barbara has really been great about wanting to explore. And being in a leadership capacity - she was in the forefront of being a woman show-runner - she really experienced that. I don't have a lot of baggage in that area."
With Brenneman an expectant mother off camera, there's likely to be a meeting of minds about family in general, and the joys and pains of parenting from both sides.
"I think for most of us," says Hall, "with our family members we just learn how to co-exist. And there are going to be fireworks."
That goes for the show, too.
"The issues of living together are going to come up. And the issues of different points of view about their professions are going to come up. And we're going to try really hard not to resolve any of them," Hall says. "I hope that after last year people had faith in [the characters'] basic respect for each other and that the audience will tolerate seeing fireworks. I hope people don't get to the place where they just want to see the issues between them resolved. Because I've never heard of that happening in real life."
Hall was a single mother with a very young daughter when she was raped late one night in New Orleans. She went through three criminal trials, the last of which took place three weeks before she was to be remarried.
"I was, at the time, in my mid-30s. I had a child. I had lived in L.A. for all this time. I lived in New York; I never had a wallet stolen, nothing. I'd been all over the world."
Nothing, however, could prepare her for the experience she was to go through. She spent 1-1/2 years in courtrooms before her attacker was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
"I just learned everything about rape: how it's treated and how it's prosecuted - and how it's mostly not prosecuted - and how people feel about it," says Hall.
"An interesting thing is that rape is such a dirty word, and it's such an awful thing, that when this first happened to me, and I first reported the crime, I told the witness [a hotel clerk] that I'd been attacked. Because I couldn't say it. And that came back to haunt me in the trial. Because in the trial, the defense said I changed my story."
That's why Hall says she has made a point of talking and writing about her ordeal.
"The main reason to talk about it openly in public has always been the same and remains the same: I didn't do anything wrong. So if I'm going to be secretive about it, there's an implication that I have something to hide. And I think it's something that needs to be said about this crime, not just for me but for everybody. And there has to be a public discussion of it.
"I had plenty of people telling me not to talk about it. I was shocked by how many women I know that this has happened to, and [they] never talked about it or reported it or anything."
Hall says she suffered through "full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder for a good year. Probably two years. I mean, I had crippling symptoms....I couldn't go out in crowds. I slept with the light on. I had night terrors. I couldn't eat; I couldn't swallow. I had been choked, so I had a lot of trachea damage."
But she survived. "I had a lot of therapy," she says. "Talking about it helps. Writing about it helps. Accepting it is really important because fighting it is ridiculous. It's part of my history now."
It's also part of the series, even if it's not part of the story line.
"I have done more than one show that involved the legal system," says Hall. "So I'm interested in it. But I've been on the other end of it. And fortunately, most people don't get to be on the other end of the criminal justice system. It gives me a different perspective, which I do bring to this show and to everything I do."
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