Kyra Sedgwick confesses about Brenda Leigh Johnson
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
‘I love, I LOVE her, I loooooove her.’
That’s Emmy winner Kyra Sedgwick speaking about LAPD Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, the character who helped her snag that statue.
However, ‘I probably wouldn’t know how to be friends with someone like Brenda,’ a woman she calls ‘incredibly insightful about other people’ but ‘clueless about herself.’
With ‘The Closer’ now closed until December and the identity of the new police chief known, Sedgwick got pulled over by The Times’ Patt Morrison for a chat about Brenda and more.
Her character’s trip this season through the tough interview process for the top job wasn’t exactly a stretch: ‘Oh honey, I’m in Hollywood,’ she says. ‘I’m prepared for that backstabbing!’
And of course there are some perks to being a TV star in L.A., especially one who’s linked in spirit to the Los Angeles Police Department. Since the show’s been running, she has indeed been stopped by the police, but hasn’t taken home a traffic ticket.
‘They either say, ‘Don’t I know you from ... ?’ or, ‘You should know better!’ ... They’ll say ...
... they know me from ‘The Closer’ or say, ‘Aren’t you Kevin Bacon’s wife?’ ‘And,’ she says sweetly, ‘I’ll go, ‘Yessssss.’’
Consulting producer Gil Garcetti and show creator James Duff also share some ‘Closer’ secrets -- like the ins and outs of ‘nuanced truth-telling’ -- in the KPCC-FM (89.3) radio piece, which you can hear in its entirety here.
Biggest kick? Remembering, as we did when we heard her at the Emmy Awards, that the thick Southern accent is Brenda’s, not Kyra’s.
-- Christie D’Zurilla
[Corrected at 10:13 p.m.: A previous version of this post spelled character Brenda Leigh Johnson’s middle name incorrectly as Lee in the headline and text. Thanks to commenter @lee for pointing it out. Oddly, the Ministry has watched every single episode of ‘The Closer,’ but referenced an incorrect source for the spelling of the character’s name.//cdz]
