HOLLYWOOD — Susan Dey doesn’t miss L.A. Law.
The reason?
“There is nothing to miss,” says the actress who played no-nonsense attorney Grace Van Owen on the Emmy-winning NBC series for six seasons. “I think so well of everybody there. I love them all. But I had no place left there. I did everything. There was nothing more for me to do but really repeat (myself).”
Dey hasn’t had the time to look back since departing from L.A. Law last year. She’s starring in the hit series Love & War, the sophisticated Diane English CBS sitcom that airs Mondays after English’s Murphy Brown.
The actress also is the star and associate producer of Sunday’s ABC movie Lies and Lullabies, in which she plays Christina, a young woman with a cocaine problem who continues to use the drug while pregnant. Because her prematurely born baby is addicted to cocaine, the infant is taken away from her. Christina’s desire to prove herself a fit mother results in her ending her self-destructive behavior.
Originally, Dey and her fellow producers had developed a story in which the drug-addicted mother died during childbirth. “We wanted to do a story on drug-exposed babies, and we hated these mothers,” Dey says. “How could they do this to these kids?”
But as Dey and the production team researched the topic for two years, their view of drug-addicted mothers began to change, and so did the story line. It’s a misconception, Dey found, that a drug-exposed baby’s problems are over after withdrawal. “The withdrawal enough is traumatizing, but most people in the country are not aware that these children will be handicapped for the rest of their lives,” she says.
After talking with the director of the Eden Center, which works with drug- addicted mothers in Los Angeles, the producers became convinced that the mothers needed as much attention as their babies and that the mother-child bond shouldn’t be broken.
“All of a sudden, the only story that could be told was about these women we hate so much,” Dey says. “To do a story about a drug-exposed baby alone would do nothing but perpetuate our anger and hatred.”
But Dey didn’t want Lies and Lullabies to become a message piece. “That’s the last thing I wanted to do. I just wanted people to respond. You like parts of Christina and there are parts when you don’t like her. But you stay with her.”
The actress decided to do away with her tailored, sophisticated Grace Van Owen hairstyle to play Christina. “I kept growing it long during L.A. Law,” she says, smiling. “It kept getting longer and longer. I didn’t know what I was going to do for Christina.”
And then one night she had a dream in which she had spiked hair. “I knew this was totally impossible because (Christina) wasn’t an L.A. girl,” Dey says. So the film’s hair stylist brought in a book about female rock singers from the ’60s and ’70s. Dey spotted a picture of British singer Marianne Faithful, who was sporting a shag. “Hers was more extreme than mine. We did a variation of this shag.”
Dey cut her hair even shorter for her Love & War role as Wally, a recently divorced woman who takes over a Manhattan restaurant-bar and falls in love with a sportswriter (Jay Thomas).
Although Dey first came to fame in 1970 as Laurie Partridge in the popular ABC comedy series The Partridge Family, Love & War marks the first time Dey has attempted a sitcom shot in front of an audience. She acknowledges that she was nervous about doing the show. “It was learning a new language, a new rhythm,” Dey says. “I said I am either going to destroy my career or this is going to be wonderful.”
She also thought the sitcom’s schedule would give her more free time. But that hasn’t been the case.
“Give me a break,” Dey says, laughing. “It took my life away. They said with a half-hour show you work from 9 to 5. You are going to have a life. You are going to be able to go out at night. But from 9 to 5 you are on your feet the whole time and just talking the whole time. You brain is working the whole time.”
ON TV
Program: Lies and Lullabies
Starring: Susan Dey
Airs: Sunday at 9 on WPLG-Ch. 10 and WPBF-Ch. 25
