Try to come between Kyra Sedgwick and her sugar fix and she’ll read you your rights.
Just like L.A. Deputy Police Chief Brenda Johnson, her character on TNT’s “The Closer,” Sedgwick has never met a snack cake or piece of chocolate she didn’t like.
“It’s taken me a long time to come out about my sugar craving,” said Sedgwick, wife of actor Kevin Bacon. “I have to have chocolate every day. For me, life is really hard. It’s nice to have a sweet thing.”
At 8 p.m. Monday, “The Closer” returns for a second season. It emerged as last summer’s breakout success story, outranking many broadcast network offerings and earning Sedgwick both Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for her portrayal of Johnson, whose brusque manner ruffles feathers, but whose brilliance invariably ensnares suspects during interrogations.
In Monday’s commercial-free premiere, Johnson must deal with the murder of a cop while trying to break her craving for snack cakes–much to the chagrin of her verbally abused minions.
Sedgwick gave herself over to the cocoa bean years ago.
“It’s taken me a while to reconcile that it’s OK,” she said. “It’s purely an American thing. We try to control so much of our food and diet.”
Sedgwick said she’s happy with her characters’ idiosyncrasies.
“She’s attempting to, as we all do, control our lives,” she said of Brenda. “We like to think we have some semblance of control, and we’re constantly being shocked and horrified when we realize we don’t have any. In her attempts to do that, she’s trying to give up sugar and control what’s going on in her heart.”
Sedgwick said that in Season 2, all Johnson’s issues continue to trouble her.
“While she feels that she’s doing the right thing,” the actress said, “people will continue to be irritated with the way she does things, and she will continue to have combative relationships.”
The entire cast is back, including J. K. Simmons as Johnson’s boss/ex-lover and Jon Tenney as her current boyfriend, FBI Agent Fritz Howard.
This season will find Johnson still frenetically attempting to juggle the demands of the mostly male squad room with those of a burgeoning relationship with Howard that’s constantly tested.
“Like many successful people, she struggles with having both,” Sedgwick said. “It’s really hard for all of us.”
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TATER’S TAKE
8 p.m.
The Closer, TNT
OK, TNT didn’t send me a preview tape of this excellent show, but I’ve been waiting all summer for it. Kyra Sedgwick is excellent as the sweet-and-sour interrogator Brenda Johnson. One minute she’s fighting a chocolate craving, the next she’s butting heads with the brass. But she always solves her cases.
