Daly's fall or stall?

Variety - July 25, 2001

By Michael Fleming

THE REAL BACK STORY: Fall in Paris once evoked connotations of romance and rich food. On the hit CBS series "Judging Amy," the term has thrown the entire series into disarray. The show's shooting its second episode, even though co-star Tyne Daly hasn't yet shown up for work. Her reps are attributing it to a fall she took in Paris, which has thrown her back out of whack. But after the backstage drama involving the quartet of "West Wing" stars seeking raises, scrutiny is high for all series stars marked absent from a hit show. Sure enough, Daly is trying to get a pay raise, as sources said her attorney, Michael Gendler, is seeking to renegotiate the former "Cagney & Lacey" star's deal, leading to speculation that the most effective prescription for Daly's back woes would be a hefty per-episode pay raise. While a key component on the show, Daly is believed to be paid less than her onscreen daughter, Brenneman, who also has the chance for backend money because she is a producer on the show. Though it's becoming not uncommon for dealmakers to seek re-negotiations for actors on hit shows defined as syndication material, Fox is taking a hard line, sources said. The studio has two shows in that category, though the other, "Roswell," isn't nearly as big a hit as it moves from the WB to UPN in the fall. Sources said that Daly originally hurt her back in a car accident suffered while she was leaving the "Judging Amy" set last season, and that she indeed aggravated it in the fall suffered in Paris. A source close to the production said that the show's braintrust, exec producers Brenneman, Barbara Hall and Joe Stern, are trusting that Daly's reps are being truthful, with Fox awaiting the results of an MRI Daly just had done. They feel they jumped through hoops to accommodate her absence, leaving a hole in the first episode that has been filmed, expecting that Daly will be back shortly. Neither Fox, Daly's attorney Gendler, nor her reps at Raw Talent would comment.


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