Kyra’s back
AFTER ending a seven-year, Emmy-winning runon The Closer in 2012, Kyra Sedgwick has finally returned to prime-time TV.
On ABC’s Ten Days In The Valley, she plays a Type double-A TV producer and writer Jane Sadler, hooked on booze, coke and whatever else gets her through the night. Her character is smart and accomplished, also deeply flawed and guilt-ridden. She’s a single mother whose only child is snatched from under her nose one night. Jane now has a mission: Find her child and the malefactors, while fighting off her own demons.
Five years is long time to be gone from prime time. Why so long?
I’m gonna be perfectly honest: I haven’t been flooded with offers. Yeah, I could give you the usual ‘I’ve been looking for the right thing’ etc, but the truth is, I haven’t been flooded with offers.
Yes, the idea of doing TV was scary to me for a few years because I was like, ‘I’m never going to have a situation as great as (The Closer). The show was so beloved and was getting nominated every year and it felt like a lot to live up to.
Tell me about Jane – she certainly is complex.
I find her authentic and real. Most of us reach for something – an Adderall, booze, TV, food, shopping, whatever – to try to take the edge off the anxiety and pressure. And she is under a lot of pressure. And when she walks into her writer’s room her co-writers blame her immediately: ‘Oh, we were here at 7am!’.
People also wonder whether she’s a good mother, but we never ask whether someone is a ‘good father,’ or if he’s ‘flawed’ or ‘not likable.’ That kind of shaming and categorizing is left for women. But I’m fascinated by her.
(Ten Days) is a mystery thriller but it’s really about getting to the bottom of who this woman is and why she is the way she is. You get deeper into her past and get flashes of what it’s like to be navigating the brain of a writer ... and writers do take a lot from their own lives. – Tribune News Service