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'Fairly Legal': Gerald McRaney judges in Sarah Shahi's favor
In "Bridges," the season-one finale of USA's "Fairly Legal," airing Thursday, March 24 (following a morning marathon of earlier episodes), San Francisco-based mediator Kate Reed (Sarah Shahi) gets a seemingly impossible assignment -- settle a dispute in one day between endlessly litigious brothers -- from tough Judge Nicastro (Gerald McRaney).Being tested by Nicastro is nothing new for Reed, whose free-and-easy style has often grated on the judge's nerves.
But off camera, it's quite a different relationship for McRaney and Shahi.
"I love working with her," McRaney tells Zap2it. "Isn't she the cutest thing ever? And very hard-working. That little girl, excuse me, young lady -- everybody's a little girl to me; I'm an old fart -- but anyway, she is just the most delightful young lady and hard-working, which always impresses me.
"She doesn't take herself seriously, but she takes what she does extremely seriously. I just love that."
McRaney then proves himself as kind a dad as he is a co-star, saying of Shahi, "She, in a strange way, reminds me of my own oldest daughter -- she's bright, intelligent, a nice person, witty, that sort of thing. So I felt a kinship with her from the get-go."
When it's remarked that Shahi is a rare thing -- a beautiful actress who's funny and not afraid to look silly -- the adoring husband of Delta Burke says, "I'm married to one. Sarah doesn't care. She's not impressed with her beauty; that's the other thing about her."
At the same time as he was working on "Fairly Legal," McRaney was playing another authority figure, a gruff CIA boss, over on the short-lived NBC caper drama "Undercovers." With that gone -- and with TNT passing on "Bird Dog," the pilot he shot this year -- if "Fairly Legal" gets a second season (which has yet to be announced), McRaney could come back.
Nothing would make him happier.
"I would like for it to work out," he says, "because I like doing Nicastro, and I love working with Sarah."
But when asked about the plot details of the episode, McRaney, who shot it a while ago, admits, "I do not remember. Oh, Lord, this is what my ex-wife refers to as half-Heimers."
Then McRaney recounts a story featuring Jameson Parker, his co-star on the long-running and popular "Simon and Simon."
"A journalist actually asked Jameson," he recalls, "'How does it feel to be the star of a Top 10 television show?' Jameson thought about it for a moment and said, 'You know, it's odd, but seeing as how television goes through stars the way a whale goes through plankton, I don't really know how to respond to that.'
"It's true, and I sometimes feel that's the way I'm approaching doing television roles. I'm going through them the way a whale goes through plankton. It's getting hard to identify the individual plankton."
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Photo/Video credit: USA
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I love Gerald McRaney but I would much rather see him in his own series or at least in more scenes than he is in FAIRLY LEGAL. He is an AMAZING actor and deserves better roles. As for being an 'old fart', he can still hang his hat on my bedpost any ole' time.
How about guest star on: HOUSE, MAD MEN, and other top shows on the air???? He'd be great for any of these shows.
Try him.....you'll like him! :)
Fairly Legal....one of the best shoes out there. Nice to finally see happy endings for a change and not the usual negative garbage.
Correction....shows...not shoes.