Daly glad she's 'Judging Amy'

Deseret News - December 12, 2000

By Scott Pierce
Deseret News television critic

She's not exactly complaining about it, but "Judging Amy" hasn't turned out exactly the way Tyne Daly expected it to.

"I thought she was retired, and I thought she'd be doing all sorts of fun stuff like learning French and things," Daly said of her character, Maxine. "But then they put her back to work."

Indeed, early in the first season of "Judging Amy" (which airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on CBS/Ch. 2), Maxine went from being a retired social worker to an un-retired social worker. Which actually meant that she could interact with her daughter, family-court judge Amy (Amy Brenneman), both at home and in the workplace. And it provided the character with enough depth that five-time Emmy winner Daly received her 10th Emmy nomination this past season (although she didn't win).

And, again, Daly certainly isn't complaining, even though she's "catching up on my research about the Department of Children and Families."

"I love the dynamic in the show that the mama is on the front lines of the problems — the social problems," Daly said. "She knocks on the door and says, 'Good morning. I understand you're beating your kid. Would you like to talk about it out here or would you like to go inside?' And the daughter, the younger woman, is at the end of that process where she makes the final judgment about whether you get to keep the kid or not. And that's an interesting setup. That has a lot of possibilities in it."

The fact that Maxine became an active social worker instead of a retired one did, however, mean that her role became somewhat more taxing for Daly.

"One of the things that is painful about 'Judging Amy' — and I didn't really realize this until we were sort of four or five shows in — was that our victims weekly were going to be kids," Daly said. "When it stopped being fashionable to have women victims . . . we moved to victimizing children. In fact, children in this culture are not honored and protected in the way that they ought to be. But it's soul-destroying to have to play out these stories every week about children in pain and children misused and abused. It's hard."

But she isn't asking that the show's writers cut back on the tough stuff.

"No, in fact, we talked to the producers about doing more of that," Daly said. "We've only dipped into a lot of the problems. When I say that they hurt the heart, it doesn't mean that we reject them."

Of course, the characters on "Judging Amy" have personal lives as well — there's more to the show than just the legal issues that dominate the characters' professional lives.

"Hopefully, what we counterbalance that with is the home front, where these folks are struggling to make a life in the modem world that is confusing," Daly said. "Last year, my daughter was threatened by a maniac in my own garage, my son was shot by somebody at the grocery store, and at the end of the season he was blown up by a nutburger. . . . So these folks are trying to incorporate how to live and love each other and get on in a world that seems fraught with danger and fateful occurrences that are uncontrollable."

Actually, the veteran of "Cagney & Lacey" is quite happy to be on another successful TV series — "Judging Amy" caught just about everyone by surprise when it turned out to be last season's highest-rated new drama.

"I think it was a really exciting freshman year," Daly said. "We took off really fast. Somebody wanted to look at it, which was good."

And the 56-year-old actress has no qualms about playing a character who's older than she is.

"I'm interested in the generational dynamic, you know? The mother and the daughter and her daughter," Daly said, referring to Maxine, Amy and Amy's daughter, Lauren (Karle Warren). "I find myself, now, wishing that I lived in some kind of African (village), where the family was all sort of circled together. My mother, who's about to be 80; my ex-mother-in-law, whom I still like a lot, who's 84 — they live in apartments, by themselves, and I sometimes yearn for them to be a little closer because I do believe in the value of older people and younger people. I know they're not very fashionable in our culture night now, but I think that children and children's points of view on the world, and old folks, and their points of view on the world, are useful to the society."

And she certainly doesn't worry about playing a mother and a supporting character.

"Well, the older I get, the more I realize that I've had some kind of affinity for playing mothers. I was playing mothers when I was 11 years old in the local (theater)," Daly said. "And Mary Beth Lacey (her character in 'Cagney & Lacey') was a mother. And Miss Alice (in 'Christie') was a surrogate mother and a mentor to a younger woman. And so maybe there's something about the mother business as a motif. I don't know."

And then there was the character she played in her Tony-winning Broadway role — Mama Rose in "Gypsy" is "a famous monster mother."

And Maxine has had a chance to be more than just Amy's mother — a longtime widow, the character has had a romance (with a character played by guest-star Richard Crenna) that proved to be popular with viewers.

"Oh, yes. Sex after 60 seems to be quite interesting to people. It's certainly interesting to me," Daly said. "So that's kind of cute. Although I also am interested in a woman at any stage of the game being a whole unto herself and not having to rely on a man . . . to validate her."


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