Act of Faith : NAOMI JUDD REVEALS WHY SHE DECIDED TO COOPERATE WITH A TV BIOPIC

A definite “people” person, Naomi Judd is a favorite with the cast and crew of “Naomi & Wynonna: Love Can Build a Bridge,” NBC’s four-hour adaptation of the best-selling 1993 autobiography she wrote with Bud Schaetzle.

The week before, they decorated her trailer and threw a party for her 49th birthday. Gazing out the trailer’s window through her tinted glasses, Judd points out one of the crew. “That’s Bob,” she says, adding that she knows everyone’s name and personal story. Judd frequently waves to them as they pass by her trailer window. Her assistant knocks on the door to remind her that the director’s parents are on the set to meet her.

On this bleak, overcast Friday afternoon, Judd is sitting in her small trailer situated in the parking lot of the old Ambassador Hotel. Inside the Los Angeles landmark, director Bobby Roth is shooting a sequence in which the teen-age Naomi Judd attends a lavish high school ball.

Judd, who is co-executive producer of the movie airing Sunday and Monday, is keeping a vigilant eye on the production, heeding the advice of good friend Loretta Lynn, whose own life story was turned into the 1980 film “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

“She said, ‘Bird dog them, honey. Don’t let them out of your sight.’ ”

Ironically, Judd never had any intention of writing “Love Can Build a Bridge” or having her and her daughter Wynonna’s incredible rags-to-riches story transformed into a TV movie.

“You know people have been saying our life story would be a full-length feature,” she says in her soft Southern accent. “I would laugh at it.”

For eight years, Naomi and Wynonna were the country-music superstar act known as the Judds. The Grammy Award winners sold more than 15 million albums worldwide and were the No. 1 touring country act by 1991. Youngest daughter Ashley was beginning to make a name for herself as an actress (“Ruby in Paradise”). Then, their dream lives were shattered in 1990, when Naomi, a former nurse, was diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening liver disease, chronic active hepatitis. In 1991, the duo embarked on an incredibly successful and emotional farewell tour.

Judd knew there was something wrong with her even before the doctor told her. “I never had a cold,” says Judd, who is now in remission. “I had worked ICU in the hospital and I was exposed to every germ that had ever been. I was on top of the world. I crawled over broken glass to get here and I just wouldn’t acknowledge (the illness). I was in a wheelchair and I couldn’t finish my sentences. I felt like my body was poisoning me. I acknowledged the diagnosis, but I did not accept the prognosis.”

She knew modern medical science couldn’t cure her. “There is no medication,” she says. “They put me on interferon, which sort of jump-starts your body’s immune system. Then I began what I call my voyage of self-discovery on a journey to wellness.”

That journey led her to read about and seek out various forms of alternative medicine. “I have been meeting with the most brilliant minds in America for the last five years,” she says.

She also made a pact with God. “I know that I am the child of the most high God and I know there’s a divine intelligence who runs this whole show,” she says. “I know there is a supreme being. I made a contract with God then to be co-creators with Him in my healing, which simply means I was going to do my part. I tried to cut out fat and I cut out meat.” And she took long walks on her farm, named Peaceful Valley, outside of Nashville in Franklin, Tenn.

Judd also became a spokesperson for the American Liver Foundation. “I was able to separate the wheat from the shaft about alternative medicine,” she says.

During her farewell tour, the ill would line up at her bus at every spot, “with everything from terminal cancer to AIDS. I was a clearing house for liver disease.”

After the tour, she spent 2 1/2 years at her farm writing “Love Can Build a Bridge,” which chronicled her failed early marriage, her struggle to support Ashley and Wynonna with a variety of odd jobs and how, after moving to Nashville in 1983, they landed a recording contract with RCA.

Her ex-manager, she says, signed contracts with Random House for her autobiography and with producer Jordan Kerner (“Fried Green Tomatoes”) for a TV movie without telling her. “I didn’t know anybody at Random House,” she says. “I had not met Jordan Kerner.”

But the contracts were signed. So Judd “sat alone at home and wrote the book in longhand by myself. Then it came time for the miniseries. I went to a lawyer and said, ‘Never in a million years would I have done this.’ ”

Judd smiles. “There is no such thing as coincidence. It’s just God’s way of staying visible. The night Wynonna made her solo performance, the very first time she sang without me. It was at a club called the Fine Line in Minneapolis. I went back to the hotel at 1 in the morning (after the concert), and this guy comes up to me in the lobby and says, ‘My name is Jordan Kerner.’ ”

The two went up to her room and spent the next seven hours talking. “I said, ‘I saw your name on the contract and I am very direct and I am very candid and this is way too personal.’ We talked and I just got a real good sense. First of all, I loved ‘Fried Green Tomatoes.’ I got a sense that this guy got it. He does movies about empowering women.”

Judd knew she had two options when it came to the NBC movie. “Wynonna, Ashley and I could do a little press release saying, ‘We have nothing to do with this. We were signed to a contract, but we just can’t be involved.’ Or I could be the guardian angel for it. I felt like we were in good hands with a man of Jordan Kerner’s character. Bobby Roth is one of Jordan’s childhood friends. Bobby and I are now best friends.”

Though she has the title of co-executive producer, Judd isn’t involved in the money or casting decisions. “The truth is no one would ever allow me to have anything to do with money,” she says, laughing. “First of all, with the director, I would give him the moon. I would mortgage my farm. I am an artist myself and I believe in an unobstructed creative process. Secondly, I think money is like manure. It’s no good unless it’s spread around. I mean if you saw where I live ... I live in the most average little house ...”

Of course, she slyly adds, “We got 1,000 acres. I feel like I live in a ‘National Geographic Special.’ Wynonna owns 500 acres and I own 500. Ashley, who lost everything in the fires in Malibu, is remodeling an old farmhouse (nearby).”

It’s been a strange experience for Judd watching Kathleen York play her and Viveka Davis portray Wynonna. “Beyond bizarre,” she says. “I was just looking at my call sheet and most people on a Friday night go to the movies. Larry (husband Larry Strickland) and I are going to go in there and watch ourselves meet. Last night, we sat here and watched dailies and it was the scene where I threw Larry out. We didn’t see each other for a year-and-a-half. We were sitting and we were both crying. I said (to him), ‘I am so glad you are here because this is really strange.’ ”

Judd acknowledges she often forgets what year it is. “I know I’m 49, but I just watched the scene where Wynonna, Ashley and I move to Nashville and check into a cheap motel,” she says. “We just did the scene in an abandoned hospital where I am 18 and they do a C-section on me and Wynonna is born. I was in Nashville just last week while Wynonna had a C-section. It’s bizarre. I don’t even know how to describe it.”

Both York and Davis are lip-syncing to the Judds’ songs. The Judds opposed any notions of having the actresses do the singing, as Sissy Spacek did in “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

“Wynonna and I said, ‘We are sorry. This isn’t even up for discussion. Music is the most important thing. We are not being smug and saying that someone isn’t better than us.”

Judd still misses performing on stage, but the self-described “communicator” still gets to meet people through her speaking engagements and book tours.

“I am not an expert,” she says. “I kind of get up every day and try to do the best that I can. When the book came out I remember my editor at Random House, who has become my dear friend, called and said, ‘You don’t have to do a book tour.’ I said, ‘You don’t get it. The whole reason I wrote this book was to try to give people a great sense of their own strength. I have been in excruciating isolation for 2 1/2 years. I have my bus, which is my barn. It’s gassed. It’s washed. My dogs are ready. I got my flannel jammies and I am going out there.’

“I still do book signings because you pull into a bookstore and you sit there and you get to talk to people. You can’t beat it.”

“Naomi & Wynonna: Love Can Build a Bridge” airs Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC.