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Star of 'Judging Amy' overwhelmed by intensity of reality
Evansville Courier & Press - November 2, 1999
By FRAZIER MOORE, AP television writer
NEW YORK — Not only was Amy Brenneman its star, but she also played a key role in getting "Judging Amy" off the ground and onto CBS' fall schedule.
Despite her keen involvement, though, she hadn't yet been to the studio when shooting began in July.
"So, I show up for work at Paramount," she recalls. "It's 5:45 and I can't find our stages or anybody I know."
For a while, she explores the fabled Hollywood lot. Then she sees the hallway of the courthouse — the Hartford, Conn., courthouse where Judge Amy Gray will soon preside.
For a moment, she admires the set. "And then I start to cry. Because it's — well, before, it was all just an idea. And now: Look at the wonderful job these people did!"
Exhilaration. Team pride. It's quite a different image than viewers got a few weeks later when "Judging Amy" premiered. After a sleepless night before her first day as a Juvenile Court
judge, Amy Gray stands at her bedroom mirror in her judge's robe — and panics. Diving back into bed, she pulls the covers over her head.
Viewers clearly liked what they saw on the premiere and thereafter. Starting strong, "Judging Amy" (which airs tonight at 9 on WEVV-Ch. 44), has emerged as the season's highest-rated new
drama, ranking 13th among prime-time shows.
It's not so hard to understand. Amy Gray, a newly divorced single mom, has left behind Manhattan, marriage and corporate law to move back to Hartford with her 6-year-old daughter, and back into
her childhood home. There she resumes her complicated relationship with her mother (Tyne Daly), a hard-nosed social worker. And she becomes reacquainted with her brother (Dan Futterman), a
free-spirited novelist still somehow tied down.
This is a warm, comfy series with a strong sense of place. And at its heart is Amy, whose challenges at age 35 are widely shared. By no means old but beyond unqualified youth, with wounds and
entanglements, she is trying to make a fresh start — without a clean slate.
If there are obvious differences between this Amy and her surefooted creator, other distinctions mount up between Brenneman and the TV role in which she first caught the audience's eye.
That character, of course, was rookie Officer Janice Licalsi, sizzling paramour of Detective John Kelly in the first season of "NYPD Blue." Both sexy and homicidal, Licalsi was too hot
to handle, even for that groundbreaking series. Besides, Brenneman's mopey leading man, David Caruso, had ankled the show. To no one's surprise, Licalsi was written out early.
But despite subsequent films, such as "Heat" and the just-released "The Suburbans," Brenneman longed for a series again.
"I wanted to work with a writer who can go deeper with the character each week."
The series Brenneman envisioned came from her own background in Hartford with her mother, Supreme Court Judge Frederica Brenneman (who, now semiretired, serves the series as a technical adviser).
"I wanted it to be in part about work," says Brenneman, "but also to explore what it's like after work, when you go home."
After CBS signed on, a script was written. But no one, Brenneman included, liked it. Then, by chance, she was put together with Barbara Hall, whose writing and producing credits include "I'll
Fly Away," "Northern Exposure" and "Chicago Hope."
In five days last February, Hall conjured up a new pilot script (and earned herself an executive producer title). It was shot by Brenneman's husband, Brad Siberling, who had directed "City of
Angels."
By then, Brenneman had seen "Providence," NBC's midseason hit which, like "Amy," features a slinky, curly-haired divorced woman (on "Providence," a doctor played by
Maria Kanakaredes) who moves back home to tangle.
"But I knew that our show was going to be really different," Brenneman says. "Ours is not quite as sentimental. It's a little more speedy and cerebral."
To give her series the requisite conflict, Brenneman needed the right actress for Amy's feisty mother.
"Tyne came in the first day and she ran me through my paces. She's perfect as Maxine. And she's so about truth, with vanity on the back burner.
"I had this moment of total love for her two or three weeks into shooting. We were outside and she was supposed to be raking fall leaves. But it's August and we've got our coats on and she's
sweating.
"So the makeup person ran up to her to wipe off her face. Tyne said, 'People sweat when they rake!' And I thought, 'Oh, she's fine. She's real!'"
But, then, it was an unmistakable realness that had seized Brenneman on her first shooting day as she stood in her make-believe courthouse. Like the set, a feeling had surrounded her: This new
series of hers was truly here.
"It was all really intense," she recalls, "and I'm having my little cry. Then this guy steps up to me." Finally, some help! "He says, 'Extras are supposed to go over
there.'"
Copyright © 1999 Evansville Courier & Press. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1999 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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