Glenn Close and Ted Danson made quite an impact on American TV back in 1984 when they starred as an incest victim's parents in the groundbreaking ABC movie "Something About Amelia." Now they're poised to make another splash in the much-awaited FX series "Damages," debuting Tuesday, July 24 in a commercial-free hour at 10 p.m.
This New York-filmed drama isn't likely to be as socially controversial, but it packs just as big a character punch as Danson's shocking daughter-abusing turn did. Close plays a steely litigator who'll stop at nothing to nail Danson's corporate titan, who's accused of profiting handsomely while his company tanked, Enron-style. And he'll do anything to stop her. Deaths are plotted, twists get serpentine, and it's unclear in the two episodes seen by critics just who the bad and/or good guy might be between these two heavyweights.
Close and Danson have no scenes together in the riveting debut hour, but "that's something the whole season is building up to," series co-creator Todd Kessler ("The Sopranos") told TV critics at the fall-season press tour in Beverly Hills. "We're brick by brick building the expectation of that to come later in the [13-episode] season."
He describes "Damages" as "a thriller in the legal genre," where viewers are presented with both a murder mystery and the fallout of what co-creator Daniel Zelman ("The Inside") calls "power dynamics." Zelman says "power becomes a tremendous burden, and it can force people to do compromising things. We're interested in them discovering for themselves what they're willing to do and not willing to do."
"I feel very much part of an ensemble," said Close, who first starred for FX in a season of "The Shield" as a tough police lieutenant squaring off with Michael Chiklis' ruthless street detective. "I feel like I did in 'The Shield' that any of these characters could carry an episode on their own," Close said, including young Rose Byrne as a hotshot new legal hire and Tate Donovan as a veteran colleague of Close whom the newcomer fatefully decides to trust.
Close, who lives in New York, is doing the series to stick closer to home with her teenage daughter and to plumb the depths of a complex character over time. "She knows that she's not a good mother," Close says of another developing plot with the litigator's at-risk teen son, "and I can't wait for that particular storyline. I think she has spawned a child who can give it back to her the way she's given it to everyone else. He's a smart kid, who is already a master manipulator."
The actress says she's used to her work having "a beginning, middle and end, whether it's theater or film or other things I've done in television. The idea of not knowing everything at the beginning can be a challenge. But in some ways, it's very freeing because you just have to live in the moment." Danson agreed yesterday that "knowing a lot about your character is only necessary when the writing sucks." When it's good, as in "Damages," Danson said, "you commit yourself to the writing and you end up discovering who you are."