CROSSING JORDAN star Jill
Hennessy was no TV novice when she started working on
the forensic drama.
In fact, she was savvy
enough to not get her expectations up at all.
"I’d always been told
pilots are a gamble. You never know if they’re going to
be picked up. It might air for six episodes and then be
off. I had rented an apartment in L.A. for $800 a month
and thought that would be a safe bet in case the show
wasn’t going to go on," she said from New York during a
conference call.
It turns out that
Hennessy could have invested in a condo. Crossing Jordan
has its season finale on Sunday at 11 p.m. on NBC with a
cliffhanger episode that is the hundredth in the series.
The crime show, which
also can be seen in repeats most weeknights at midnight
on A&E, stars Hennessy as Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh, a Boston
medical examiner who doesn’t restrict her work to the
lab. (The character has also crossed over twice to NBC
drama Las Vegas.)
Thanks largely to the
original CSI series, forensic story lines were already
popular when Crossing Jordan debuted in 2001. They’re
arguably more popular now with most U.S. networks having
multiple shows in the genre.
Hennessy said that
Crossing Jordan sets itself apart by having a female
protagonist and a rich ensemble.
"The characters are so
well drawn. They’re funny. They don’t take themselves
too seriously. As an actor, that’s so much more fun to
play than to be forced to spout purely technical
dialogue every episode," she said.
"It seems like these
very direct procedural forensic dramas are still going
strong and that the public really seems to be eating
them up at this point. I’m very happy that a show like
ours, which is part forensic drama but is also very
character oriented, has maintained an audience. . . .
I’m very fortunate to be on a show that’s lasted this
long, period. Most shows get cancelled at least after a
season. We’ve really beaten the odds in so many ways."
The 37-year-old
actress, who was born in Edmonton, has plenty of
episodic television experience on her resume, including
a three-season stint on Law & Order starting in 1993.
Not that getting to
make big-time television shows becomes humdrum, but
Hennessy admitted that there was a little jolt among
cast and crew when word of the plot for the
season-ending cliffhanger began circulating.
"There were a lot of
rumours going around about this episode for over a month
before I actually got a script," said Hennessy, who
often brings her two-and-a-half-year-old son to the set.
"One thing I love about
this show is everybody does get enthusiastic and excited
about upcoming episodes."
Crossing Jordan often
wanders from the cut and dry solution of a particular
episode’s crime, but Hennessy sounded like she was
anticipating future adventures even further removed from
her character’s regular haunts because of events in the
season finale.
"From the get-go, the
opening scene of this episode, it could go so many
different places. Basically there’s this plot structure
— what happens to Jordan, what happens to her emotional
state — and they also left it wide open for the
possibility of what I hope will be some movement into a
more political type of story line," she said.
"At this point, after a
hundred episodes, I’m open to anything. We could
literally go anywhere at this point and I think the
writers are ready to do that. I’ve already heard some
possibilities about future plot lines. We really have no
boundaries left."
When fans of Crossing
Jordan will get to see any new developments is somewhat
up in the air. Hennessy said the rumour mill at work has
the series staying on the sidelines for several months
until NBC finishes its debut season of Sunday night
National Football League telecasts.
"I have a feeling we’re
going to stay on Sundays once football’s off, but I’m
not sure," she said.
Hennessy is also an
accomplished musician and plans to start recording a CD
in New York during her summer hiatus from Crossing
Jordan. She said she honed her performing instincts
during an extended stay in Toronto.
"I spent three years
there but they were incredibly formative and I think
they had the most impact. I was living on my own then. I
had moved out of the house. I was waitressing to earn
money, hostessing, and then I started playing guitar in
the Bathurst Street subway station and on Queen Street
West in front of the Pizza Pizza, which was an awesome
job.
"That’s when I really
started hanging out with other artists and musicians and
other actors."
