Keeping it all in character

From left: Glenn Close as Patty Hewes, William Hurt as Daniel Purcell, and Ted Danson as Arthur Frobisher. (Craig Blankenhorne (left), Andrew McPherson (center), Larry Riley/FX)

Just after filming began this summer for the second season of "Damages," the stars of the FX drama met the press in Los Angeles. We talked to Glenn Close (who plays Patty Hewes), William Hurt (Daniel Purcell), and Ted Danson (Arthur Frobisher) about the much-lauded show.

Q. Can you tell me about Patty's motivation? . . . Any insight you wanted to give to us about her [stillborn] child?

Glenn Close: Well, I think you saw something incredibly private and incredibly painful, you know, where she's very fragile, and very few people know about that, I think. And so that's still to be worked out. I think in the beginning of this season, Patty is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome as well. I mean, what she went through was highly traumatic and made her lose control to the extent that she put a hit out on Ellen. So she still has a lot of very unresolved issues going on.

Q. For Mr. Hurt, can you talk about why "Damages"?

William Hurt: I had seen a couple of episodes and I liked them a lot. And when the [offer] came up, I sat down with a bunch of them and I couldn't turn them off. . . . The reason was because it's character-driven. . . . The standard operating procedure for TV format filming [is] very, very quick, and normally I wouldn't want that. But in this case you could see so clearly that punching through all that [were] these truly original characters, very intelligent, very imaginative. And I was watching Glenny very close to see how she was resonating. Because we had worked together and known each other for a very long time. And I could see that she had made really powerful, strong thematic choices as a character, and I thought, OK, maybe the format has been busted. And so that was it.

Q. Ted, everybody knows you as Sam Malone [from "Cheers"] . . . have you ever done a character that's as evil, dirty, and dark as Arthur Frobisher?

Ted Danson: Only when I work with Glenn. (Laughter.) I guess you'd have to say that the incestuous father [in "Something About Amelia"] wasn't a nice guy, but no, I've never had carte blanche to be as narcissistic - except in life (laughter) - as in this part.

Q. What about the reception? You were getting some of the best reviews of your career.

Danson: True. Nice, huh? . . . If I had 400 film scripts in my lap, I could be a little more arrogant about my answer, but for me what it did was it made me really excited about going to work as an actor again, and that is worth everything to me. I'm really excited to be acting, and that had kind of diminished for me a little bit. So I am so grateful for that.

Close: You weren't really acting, though. (Laughter.)

Danson: No. Narcissistic. Ted's world. (Laughter.) JOEL BROWN