Kyra Sedgwick has a trying ‘Ten Days in the Valley’

on In “The her Closer,” Emmy-winningKyra Sedgwickwork typically gave others help. Now, in her return to starring in a series, her character can use all the help she can get. The actress – who recently turned first-time director on the Lifetime movie “Story of a Girl” – goes back before the cameras in “Ten Days in the Valley,” an ABC drama from creator and executive producer Tassie Cameron (“Rookie Blue,” “Mary Kills People”) that premieres Sunday, Oct. 1. Also an executive producer of the show, Sedgwick plays Jane Sadler, a Los Angeles-based former documentary maker turned crime-show producer who’s thrust into a real-life case ... and one that’s way too personal, since her young daughter (Abigail Pniowsky) disappears. The main investigator on the case (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) soon finds no shortage of suspects, from Jane’s trying-to-conceive half-sister (“Parenthood” alum Erika Christensen) to the desperate-to-please head writer on Jane’s program (Malcolm-Jamal Warner). Even Jane’s struggling-journalist husband (Josh Randall) seems culpable, and her narcotics-detective paramour (Francois Battiste) may help her get to the bottom of things. “I like the idea of a serialized show,” Sedgwick says of “Ten Days,” in which each episode represents one day of the probe. “I really felt like we straddled both things very well on ‘The Closer,’ in that it was kind of a procedural, but it was also very much a character piece in which things were happening and themes were explored every year that were all very different and surprising. I was interested in doing a show where I’m not solving a mystery. Really, Jane is just such a mystery – and hand-inhand with the mystery of this character is the mystery of what happens to her daughter. The ‘who,’ the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ is very much unraveling the history and the mystery of Jane and her relationships with all these people. “We really, literally go back in time and find out why is Jane the way she is,” notes Sedgwick, “why she has these coping skills and mechanisms. I think these are the kinds of things that really interest me as an actor. We’re all a product of our upbringing, and to be able to deep-dive into that with this character, and also lots of other characters, was fascinating to me. Jane is very much the center of the show, but in all the characters, we get to see why they are who they are and what makes them tick. And we’re surprised by all of them.” Cameron explains “Ten Days in the Valley” sprang from “a recurring nightmare” she had: “I was working alone late at night in my writing shed, about 10 feet away from my house, and I’d finish writing and my back door would be locked and I’d break in, and my kid would be gone. I don’t have recurring nightmares very often, so when I do, I try and listen to them. I thought I would sort of write it out of my system.” Adding that the process was “amazingly successful (and) very cathartic” for her, Cameron – who gives a “Ten Days” cameo to her former “Rookie Blue” star Missy Peregrym – says that though she designed the new show as a complete story, “I think there are some real open-ended moments towards the end ... some new relationships beginning, some relationships ending, some new information, and certainly some very worthy adversaries that Jane has pissed off that I think would lead to a natural Season 2, should we be so lucky.”