Mary McDonnell Vault is your online resource dedicated to actress Mary McDonnell. You better know Mary for her role as Captain Sharon Raydor for the TNT crime series The Closer & Major Crimes, Not to forget one of her most important and intense roles, as President of the Universe Laura Roslin in Battlestar Galactica. A prolofic actress in TV like in Cinema, with roles in movies such as Independence Day, Donnie Darko, Dances with Wolves, Sneakers, Mumford, Passion Fish and many others. Site is comprehensive of a big photogallery with events, photoshoots, magazines, stills, an extensive press library to collect all the articles and interviews on her and a video gallery section for recorded interviews, sneak peeks and trailers of her projects. We claim no rights to know her personally and it's absolutely respectful of her privacy and paparazzi-free!!!

‘Major Crimes’ premiere: Mary McDonnell picks up where Kyra Sedgwick’s ‘The Closer’ leaves off

Jay Bobbin

August 13, 2012

Article taken from Zap2It

What would “The Closer” be like without the closer?
Viewers are about to find out: Literally on the heels of the finale of the much-acclaimed Kyra Sedgwick police saga — one of the top-rated dramas in basic cable history — TNT launches the spinoff series “Major Crimes” Monday, Aug, 13. The show will involve nearly all the “Closer” regulars, with the inescapably notable exception of Emmy and Golden Globe winner Sedgwick … who felt a seven-season run as interrogator extraordinaire Brenda Leigh Johnson was enough for her.

Once she made her decision known, TNT asked “Closer” mentor James Duff to devise a way to keep the other characters going. Thus, the new drama brings Mary McDonnell front and center as Sharon Raydor, the police captain she has been playing on the parent series (which actually does end immediately before “Major Crimes” begins).
G.W. Bailey, Tony Denison, Michael Paul Chan, Raymond Cruz and Phillip P. Keene are among others who will carry their “Closer” roles into the new venture. Jon Tenney and Robert Gossett also are slated to return in what the network terms “guest appearances.”
“I’ve never lost a show and gotten a show in a 12-hour period, which is what happened, basically,” executive producer Duff tells Zap2it. “It was a bit of a roller coaster, but I was very grateful for the opportunity. I don’t think there’s been a finale that’s led directly into the next series before, so we’ll see how that goes. It’s an unusual launch.”

Duff notes the potential for “Major Crimes” to exist was in direct proportion to “how long Kyra stayed. The longer she stayed, the less likely this was to happen. And I should emphasize that she didn’t ‘leave,’ since there is a distinction. She finished her contract, and she did an extra year, actually.”
Though McDonnell has been around “The Closer” for a while, she’s had no illusions who its principal female star was, but “Major Crimes” now changes the game for her considerably. “My general feeling is one of taking a deep breath and trusting James Duff and the writers and all of our company … and myself,” the “Dances With Wolves” and “Battlestar Galactica” alum reflects. “I’m trusting we’ll be able to organically allow this character to pivot into someone who’s more of a protagonist.”

McDonnell hastens to point out her Raydor doesn’t replace Sedgwick’s Brenda Leigh Johnson in the new scenario, “but she does continue to bring in the point of view of a powerful female who is central to the Major Crimes Division. In one sense, she continues where Brenda Leigh left off; in another sense, she brings a different style that began in ‘The Closer.’ The link is that there’s a continuum of the feminine in this very masculine environment.”

Indeed, Duff confirms, “I take care in the first three episodes to establish Raydor as the major player that she is, but it’s not exactly the same. ‘The Closer’ was a perspective on the justice system, and a very narrow one, too. It was the one offered by Brenda Leigh in her desire to finish what she started, and she’s more of my conscious self, someone who has a hard time balancing work and personal life.

“Raydor is more my conscience, the part that I’m reluctant to heed but that I must listen to. And looking at the justice system that way, instead of through one’s own moral prism, is an interesting switch.” or veteran actor Bailey, also known for playing another type of cop as Lt. Harris in the “Police Academy” movie comedies, “Major Crimes” offers a welcome chance to reboot his “Closer” character.

“What can I say? I’m an extraordinarily lucky guy, at this age, to have the opportunity to do this,” he says of moving forward as Detective Lt. Louie Provenza. “Not only is it fun, it’s lucrative, but it’s also very touching.”

So is how Provenza came to be in the first place, since Bailey has had ties to “Closer” and “Major Crimes” mentor Duff for a long time. Bailey taught a teenage Duff in an acting workshop, and their enduring connection played a big part in the performer going from having the originally planned multiple-episode “Closer” arc to becoming a vital, ongoing part of the show.

“All of us want to keep working, or we wouldn’t have signed on for it,” Bailey explains of the encore act “Major Crimes” is giving him and many “Closer” peers. “We can congratulate each other until the cows come home, but if the people in Omaha and Chicago and Atlanta and Miami don’t watch, it won’t stay. Do we think about it? Of course we do, but you can’t do a scene thinking about that stuff. It’s not how you approach a day’s work. We’d like to grow the audience, but that’s up to them.”

Duff shares that view, reasoning that “There aren’t that many spinoffs to begin with, and successful ones are even smaller in number. It is sometimes a question as to whether you even want to go on, but while we were doing ‘The Closer,’ the justice system evolved … and it’s called the justice system, not ‘the fairness system.’ Most prosecutions end in deals being made, except for murder cases, and the reaction to this new paradigm from regular homicide detectives is really interesting. They have a different view of how the system works.”

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Script developed by Never Enough Design