Entertainment

The Daly Shows

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 9, 2000 / 12:00 PM EDT / CBS

Emmy award-winning actress Tyne Daly is set to kick off her second season on the critically acclaimed drama Judging Amy. But she's not the only member of her family to work for CBS. Her brother Tim is the star of the new series The Fugitive and their father, James Daly, starred in the long-running show Medical Center.

Tyne spoke with Jane Clayson on the CBS News Early Show, and in a CBSNews.com exclusive, had even more to say that did not air on television.

Jane Clayson: Daly, good morning. Nice to see you.

Tyne Daly: Good morning.

Jane Clayson: I was such a fan and am still a fan but I loved you on Cagney And Lacey for years. And now Judging Amy.

Bio

Six Degrees Of Tyne Daly

Tyne and Tim Daly are the first brother and sister in television history to star in separate series on the same network in the same season.

Tim stars in The Fugitive. Their father starred in the CBS classic Medical Center.

Bette Midler, who has her own CBS series this season, and Tyne have both headlined as Mama Rose in Gypsy. Daly won a Tony award in 1990 for the role, and Midler played Rose in CBS's 1993 film version.

Daly and Christine Baranski share a son -- Dan Futterman. He played Baranski's son in the film The Birdcage and stars as Daly's son in Judging Amy.

In 1981, Tyne Daly and Loretta Swit were cast in the pilot of Cagney and Lacey, a story of two policewomen who could handle their jobs with courage and assuredness. The success of the pilot led to a series in 1982.

As Detective Mary Beth Lacey, Tyne Daly fought to be accepted on equal terms with her male counterparts, and also struggled to maintain a normal home life as wife and mother.

Her realistic portrayal earned her considerable praise from real-life law enforcement officials.

Cagney and Lacey was cancelled in 1983, but brought back to the air a year later thanks to a viewers' letter-writing campaign.

By the time the series ended in 1988, Daly had won four Emmy awards for her portrayal of Lacey

Judging Amy starts its second season on Tuesday Oct. 10 at 10 p.m.

Daly plays the mother of Judge Amy gray, Maxine Gray, who is a social worker

The title character, Judge Amy Gray, is played by Amy Brenneman, who also created thshow, basing it on her own mother, who is a judge in Hartford, Conn.

Brenneman's last big television series was NYPD Blue. She and Daly joke about their past cop show history.

Daly won a fifth Emmy in 1995-96 for her supporting role in the short-lived series Christy.

Tyne Daly: Six, yeah. We had a good run with that one. Then Christy was a little shorter. But Christy was only two seasons. This one has taken off awfully fast, so fast that when I talked to Miss O'Donnell last week, she said, 'How long have you been on, three years?' I said, 'Wait a minute, no, we've just begun. We just started to swing. This year is fun. Because we're sort of getting the hang it.'"

Jane Clayson: Maxine Gray is your character. The matriarch of this family, a social worker. She's a great character. What attracted you to her?

Tyne Daly: I like it because she was furious. She was furious that her grown-up daughter had gotten divorced and moved back home. She's still pretty furious about it. In fact this year, she's gotten so furious about how many hits she's taken from the world that she's forced to go to an anger-management seminar in which I get do an absolutely spectacular rant, but I'm not allowed to show it to you next because it isn't until the fourth show.

Jane Clayson: A little taste.

Tyne Daly: People at the seminar who are angry about things like bad drivers and folks that call you up during dinner to solicit some subscription to the newspaper. What it gets to Maxine's turn, she says, well, my anger is ignited by men who beat their children to death with electrical cords and by women who take crack and drink alcohol while they're pregnant, not carrying the souls of their children. She goes on and on and makes this fantastic list of evil. And she says that the thing she really pissed her off about is the people who complain about bad drivers when there is actually evil in the world. It is a lovely rant.

Jane Clayson: You forge these incredible characters. Do you think they're that good when they start with you or do you make them into something that is terrific?

Tyne Daly:They're always good on the page for starters because they have to be or else I'm not interested. What you look for are possibilities. What I saw in Mary Beth Lacey was this woman who was married and had kids and was trying to do her work and was in the perfect situation of sort of women in the '80s, doing the juggling act. What I saw in Miss Alice was kind of a woman whose life was her pulpit from the back of a horse, which I liked a lot. This woman, she's lovely and complicated and she's evolving in a way that is fun. And then she has a real smart daughter and some interesting sons.

Jane Clayson: A real family affair on your set these days, I hear. Amy is pregnant.

Tyne Daly: The people that aren't pregnant have suchorrendous baby envy that we've all started knitting and we knit so fast and so loudly that the soundman has to say everybody stop knitting because we all have baby envy. Amy is pregnant. The soundman's wife is pregnant. One of our drivers had a kid. There is about seven pregnancies all told. It is part of an actual national baby boom, I believe. Aren't we having a boom?

Jane Clayson: A boom on Judging Amy.

Tyne Daly: They say there is a national boom. Because everybody is rich.

Jane Clayson: It is so nice to meet you.

Tyne Daly: It is nice to meet you.