With Full Docket, ‘Judging Amy’s’ Star Courts Success

Amy Brenneman enters the WCBS-TV newsroom one afternoon clad in tight, black leather pants and heeled strappy sandals, her curly hair flowing freely over a black jacket. Her entourage of two publicists, a hairstylist and a makeup artist accompany her into a wardrobe room where she preps for her next interview.

It’s been an entire day of media appearances for the star and creator of the hit CBS drama “Judging Amy,” including everything from a chat with Regis and Kathie Lee to a spot on a New York radio station.

This is familiar ground for most TV and movie stars, but for Brenneman, who recently learned that “Judging Amy” is being picked up for a second season, it’s still sinking in.

“I feel like a kid getting shuffled from place to place,” she said. “Every week you watch the numbers, and then after the eighth or ninth time that it was on, then I was like, ‘OK, this is OK, we can relax.’ When we got picked up for the rest of the year, that was a sigh of relief.”

She only arrived in New York the night before, fresh from introducing her soon-to-be-released film, “Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her,” at the Cannes International Film Festival. She is on the East Coast for a round of May sweeps publicity appearances and a weekend in her native Connecticut.

But first she has interviews to finish.

Brenneman exits the dressing room at the WCBS studios, this time wearing black pants studded with silver sequins. There was a slight clothing mishap while getting her hair put in a French twist: As the slender Brenneman was sitting down to have her hair done, her pants split. Good thing her publicist had a suitcase of extra clothing.

She spends a few minutes with a WCBS anchorwoman, barely able to get a word in with the chatty interviewer. But Brenneman laughs at her jokes, not correcting her when she gets the last name of her TV character wrong.

In a limousine heading downtown from the WCBS studios on Fifth Avenue to CNN near Penn Station, Brenneman discusses her self-described “obsession” with Hartford, Conn., her love of the WB’s “Felicity,” and her favorite episodes of VH1’s “Behind the Music.” Plus, there are promises of an upcoming “Judging Amy” trip to the Hartford area. The show takes place in East Hartford, but this weekend marks the first time Brenneman has been in the Hartford area since last winter.

Brenneman is excited about returning home but jokes about being nervous after hearing that folks in Connecticut are upset that “Judging Amy” hasn’t filmed in the city where the program takes place.

Brenneman says the cast will be shooting scenes there in late September, and crew members will return to Connecticut again in the winter for additional shots.

“Nobody is obsessed with Hartford like I am,” Brenneman said. “My writers love the fact that it’s set in a specific place, and that always makes a show better. In terms of shooting exteriors, the writers were like, ‘We don’t need to do it.’ I was like, ‘You guys, the state of Connecticut is going to hate me. We have to go, it’s getting negative out there.’ ”

It costs money to bring the cast and crew to Connecticut for location shots, so the producers wanted to make sure the show was getting renewed before going ahead with them.

Her Mother Inspired the Amy Gray Character

It hasn’t been easy creating a New England city in California. In fact, the producers told the cast they couldn’t wear sunglasses at first.

“At a certain point I said, ‘You know what? People in Connecticut wear sunglasses,’ ” Brenneman said.

“Judging Amy” bases the career of its main character, Amy Gray, on that of Brenneman’s mother, who is a Superior Court judge in Connecticut. But she said that’s where the similarities end.

“I portray somebody made up,” Brenneman said. “Nobody is playing my mom. The work venue came from her. I was interested in my take of what it would be like to do her job.”

The show is centered on Gray, a newly divorced mother of one daughter, who returns to East Hartford with her mother, Maxine, played by Tyne Daly. In creating the show, Brenneman was interested in strong female characters, something she said is lacking in many TV programs.

“The interesting challenge is to create a real person so that all these characters have strength and then they have moments when they’re not so strong,” she said.

Brenneman pointed to a recent episode, in which her character slept with her ex-husband right after their divorce was complete.

“Tyne read that and said, ‘I don’t know if I was reacting as me or Maxine,’ but she was like, ‘Why did you sleep with him?’ I said, ‘Well, I think it’s human.’

“I think the minute we start acting like public-service announcements it gets less interesting.”

The show’s success has pushed back Brenneman’s plans to have children with husband Brad Siberling, who directed the show’s pilot.

“That was sort of an interesting part of the show doing so well,” Brenneman said. “I thought, the show’s not going to do well and in a couple of months we can start a family. We put it off for a little bit and then we’ll get ready for that double-wide trailer and nannies.”

For now, Brenneman is looking forward to a summer of relaxation in California and traveling to exotic locations. She’s considering a trip to Bali. “This summer I’m going to hang out,” she says. “I’m plum tuckered out.”