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True (NYPD) Blue: The series' women
characters are emerging as strong, forceful personalities (Excerpt)
Newsday - May 10, 1994
By Janice Berman, Staff Writer
WHEN A TV series like "NYPD Blue" becomes the most-talked-about show of the season, audiences notice more
than just the stars.
David Caruso, as Det. John Kelly, and Dennis Franz, as Det. Andy Sipowicz dominate the precinct house, but there's
room inside for others.
That's especially so now, as the ABC drama prepares to air the final two episodes of its initial season.
Tonight (at 10 on Ch. 7) and next Tuesday, viewers will see important storylines focusing on three of the female
supporting characters, whose air time has grown as the ratings have built: Det. Janice Licalsi (Amy Brenneman),
civilian assistant Donna Abandando (Gail O'Grady) and Assistant District Attorney Sylvia Costas (Sharon Lawrence).
Throughout the season, these women have had their romantic entanglements with the cops, have bared their bodies and
in some cases, their souls, as they cope with life in the testosterone-charged atmosphere of the 15th precinct.
"NYPD Blue" may not be "Cagney & Lacey," yet its women are strong characters and influential
forces - and the relatively unknown actresses playing them are beginning to receive the attention given their male
colleagues.
AMY BRENNEMAN
Walking into a Bochco Productions office on the 20th-Century Fox lot, near the set of "NYPD Blue" Amy
Brenneman looks like a college kid - all that tousled curly hair, well-worn jeans, sandals, plaid shirt with
sunglasses hooked at the neckline and a bright, open face.
Despite her sunny appearance, she has the darkest of the three roles.
Newly promoted Det. Janice Licalsi is a cop's daughter whose father committed suicide just as he was indicted for
corruption. In an early episode that has resonated all season, she killed a mobster (and his chauffeur) who was
shaking her down. She got away with it when another hood copped to the murders as part of a pleabargain.
Licalsi is "not a character who has been happily received by women cops," said executive producer David
Milch, "because she did a wrong thing."
It probably won't make those cops any happier to learn that the actress who plays the wrongdoer has a Harvard
degree. In religion.
Moreover, the 29-year-old Connecticut native is the daughter of a mother who's a judge. Her father is an
environmental lawyer. Not exactly on-the-job training for playing a blue-collar cop, but that's why she's an
actress.
"I have this thing that comes out. I become much more brazen," said Brenneman, a self-described
"tomboy" who grew up with two brothers. "I walk on the set and sort of swagger and curse," she
said, talking out of the corner of her mouth to illustrate, but breaking into a big grin. "Sometimes I come
home and say, what was that? And sometimes it's a very instinctive thing, not to want to be treated like The
Girl."
She also earned the distinction of being the show's first female character to doff her clothes, during her romance
with Kelly (now on the rocks).
The scene could have felt awkward, she said, but she and Caruso are friends and she likes his touch. "We're
giving each other hugs forever." (Off camera, both have their own love lives; Brenneman's boyfriend is Brad
Silberlin, whom she met when he directed an episode.)
Brenneman's background is in theater. While at Harvard, she and some friends formed Cornerstone Theater, a
collective company that brought classic plays to small towns. After some small roles in New York, she headed west,
where her work included a part on the short-lived, but well-received CBS series "Middle Ages." She is only
being half-facetious when she describes the difference between New York and West Coast actors as "taking acting
classes versus working out."
Nevertheless, Brenneman's most notable moment came from something not taught in drama school, and it gave viewers
everywhere plenty to talk about the next day. So what was her mother-the-judge's verdict when her child bared it all
on prime-time TV?
"That I was too skinny," laughed Brenneman.
Copyright © 1994 Newsday Inc. All rights reserved.
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