Dey by Day

Susan Dey still hasn’t made up her mind. Or maybe she is just keeping mum.

Midway through her sixth season on “L.A. Law,” Dey still has no inkling if she will leave the Emmy-laden NBC series after this season.

“I have to be honest with you,” she said. “I have no concept.”

In 1990, Dey announced the fifth season would be the last one for her to play attorney Grace Van Owen. But just before the season finale last May, Dey changed her mind and decided to sign on for season No. 6.

“Last year was, ‘Yes. No. Yes. No, ‘ “ Dey said, laughing. “And for me to say now, that I know now. ... I have a year contract and it expires in April or May. I am looking at other (TV) projects. I am open to another series, but I have no idea what my future has in store for me.”

Although Dey, 39, who is nominated for a Golden Globe as Van Owen, didn’t leave the series, regulars Harry Hamlin, Jimmy Smits and Michele Greene did. And so did its Emmy-winning executive producer and head writer David E. Kelley. Several new actors were brought in and Patricia Green has filled Kelley’s shoes, along with other new producers and writers.

Though “L.A. Law” beats its competition--CBS’ “Knots Landing” and ABC’s “PrimeTime Live,” the series has all but fallen out of the Top 10.

“I think it (the season) is going as well as anyone would ever expect it to go considering what has transpired,” Dey said. “Though (Green) was involved last year, this staff has to find itself and its own voice and that’s hard to do. We are all used to one voice and here comes another. I am very supportive and positive.”

Dey was unhappy, though, Grace was not allowed to be a single mother. At the beginning of this season, Grace had split up with Victor (Smits) and lost her baby. “I was really hoping for single parenting,” she said. “I guess there was no way for Grace Van Owen to have a baby without a father. I agree that it was not a great thing to say that Victor Sifuentes was an absentee father.”

Perhaps loose ends will be tied up when Smits returns in an episode scheduled to air on Feb. 13, during the all-important sweeps period.

“I don’t have a script yet,” Dey said. “All I know is it definitely is going to be dealing with the reasons for them to separate. There will be some kind of resolution. Most of the time when an actor leaves a series, they don’t come back. We are really lucky to be able to experience this resolution in these two people’s lives.”

In the ABC movie, “Bed of Lies,” Dey plays a wife and mother who was driven to violence because she could not resolve her troubled marriage. The movie chronicles the story of Vickie Daniel, a Dairy Queen waitress from the wrong side of the tracks who, in the 1970s, fell in love and married Price Daniel Jr. (Chris Cooper), the son of the state’s governor. When he turned out to be an abusive husband, Vickie killed him.

“I have to be honest with you,” Dey said with a broad smile, “my interest in the story was in portraying a Dairy Queen waitress. It was so totally different (from Grace). The clothes, the high heels and just where she came from, what her life was. It is a Cinderella story. All of a sudden she is being wooed by the governor’s son.”

Dey was frightened with the prospect of playing a real-life person. She recalled how uncomfortable she felt two years ago when she starred in another fact-based ABC movie, ‘I Love You Perfect,” in which she played a young woman who dies of cervical cancer.

“I remember asking the universe to help me be true to her and feeling this incredible responsibility,” Dey said. “On this film, I was really concerned about it.” Until she read John Ireland’s screenplay based on Steve Salerno’s book, “Deadly Blessing.”

The screenplay, Dey said, “was no longer specific. It was not a portrayal of that person, it was a portrayal of the events, which made it a little easier. It is a portrayal more on emotional lines.”

The project was filled with risks, Dey said, because she decided to make Vickie a woman who was “not so great all the time.” Dey shook her head. “I don’t know how to explain it,” she said. “She couldn’t be perfect and he wasn’t perfect.”

Besides utilizing a Texas twang and dressing flamboyantly, “what I tried to do along was at times to make her personality just a little bit irritating, just a little bit,” Dey said. “ ‘Yuck’ is your reaction to her.”

Though Dey’s husband, Bernard Sofronski, was the executive producer of “Bed of Lies,” she said she had to fight for the part. “He doesn’t have the power to say to a network (who to cast),” she said tersely. “Give me a break. It was a major fight. The network couldn’t view me playing this lady--this Dairy Queen lady.”

So has Dey fallen victim to typecasting because she is too believable as Grace?

“I am doing something right, I guess,” she said matter-of-factly. “You do it so well they say, ‘It must be her.”’

“Bed of Lies” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on ABC .

“L.A. Law” airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. on NBC and reruns air Mondays-Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 5 p.m. on Lifetime.