From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You may know my guest, Amy Brennamen for a long-time TV.

I first noticed her in a show Middle Ages 20 years ago.

But of course, it's Officer Janice LaCalsy on NYPD Blue and judging Amy private practice. In the newest show, she plays Lori Garvey in the adaptation of The Leftovers for HBO.

Amy, first of all, thanks so much for being here.

It's great to be here. And one of the things that I've noticed about so many things you play,

even I'm just thinking,

you probably were one of the handful of people who are with Al Pacino twice,

you find a way of sort of like staking kind of a moral ground

for these characters you play, don't you?

Oh, I do. I guess I do.

Well, I have to find my way into them. I was actually thinking about people that are really great players of villains. You know, I don't know, because I sort of, I don't see myself as playing, okay, villainous, edgy people that much. So my, I always look at them like, okay, they're the, they're the leads of their own story. And so they have to believe what they're doing is the best choice available to them. Yeah, I always think of it.

I don't know if I method as much as, like, I literally picture like the UN and how everybody's sitting

there and they have their countries that they represent in front of them. So I represent Lori.

I advocate for Lori. So to that end, I have to explain at least to myself why she does what she does.

But it's interesting because I think I know these characters stand in the terms of morality

very early on. I just think because I went back and watched the first season of NYPD Blue.

And just we're thinking about how we really see Janice fighting with that, what she's supposed to be

versus what she's become.

And then for Amy, so many of these things are about just her to try to determine a moral stance

in these cases that really were about people fighting in the most petty way possible,

trying to prove that their kids were property.

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