From Creators.com/Women & Hollywood:

With a debut that scored 7.2 million viewers for her “The Closer” spinoff, “Major Crimes” star Mary McDonnell is looking forward optimistically to word of a Season 2 sometime soon. “I can’t commit the network, because I don’t run it,” she says with a laugh. “But I will say TNT has been absolutely, stunningly, remarkably supportive of this series in the promotion, marketing and belief that this is something that can be done, should be done and is what the fans want. TNT knows what they have, and they’ve handled it beautifully,” she gushes. “They have patience. Clearly, they were not disappointed. They were super smart and super brave. They’re the kind of network you want to be working for.”

Meanwhile, with the first 10 episodes of “Major Crimes” in the can, “I am enjoying a little relaxation time,” says the brilliant actress of “Battlestar Galactica” and “Dances With Wolves” renown. “I have a little independent film I would love to do, but I can’t really talk about it because not all the pieces are there. And then, I look forward to knowing about our second season. There are some things I really want to study about things I’ve learned in the first season.”

“It’s thrilling, what starts to happen over the course of the 10 episodes,” declared Mary, whose straight arrow police Captain, Sharon Raydor, is now in charge of the LAPD Major Crimes unit/family-of-sorts that she used to dislike.  “It will be so delightful for fans of ‘The Closer,’ what we find out about these beloved characters they have spent seven years with, because of the way she runs the office, the way she is a boss, the way that they have to start to work together.”

As for Captain Raydor, “All the way through the 10 episodes, this woman has surprised me, revealed things to me and made me chuckle,”  Mary said.

Read the entire article here.

A wonderful new interview with Mary McDonnell from Zap2it.com with good questions and some wonderful insights into Sharon as an evolving character.

“As she becomes an insider as opposed to an outsider, that mistrust doesn’t just dissipate — because that means we would have to have a completely different person there, and there wouldn’t have been that history. So what’s interesting about it for me — one of the many things that’s interesting — [is] working with that mistrust from the inside, and seeing where that can take us and what we have to do. I feel like it’s very reflective of what a lot of people go through” when they either change jobs or get new bosses.

There are always these adjustments that are difficult to make, so I sort of love that we see this happening inside this Major Crimes division.”

Read the whole thing here.

In a new interview with Starry Constellation Magazine, Mary discusses Sharon Raydor:

“In a general sense, we’re looking at a woman eventually.We’re looking at a woman who actually has – had a very full life. Whether or not it was perfect, of course not. But has had a full life. And there are reasons why someone may or may not have chosen to go through the LAPD as an internal affairs person as opposed to a detective where you are on call 24/7. And there a question and an exploration there about how do professional women also raise children? How does it happen? What are the choices that a woman at mid-life has to make at a certain period of time in order to create the goal being balanced perhaps? You know what I mean? And so there’s a little bit of exploring of that reality in there because that is what we are seeing with women who are my age who are now taking on positions in their professional life that are demanding more of them than ever before, and a generation ago these same women would have been retiring. So we have an opportunity, I think, to explore something that’s happening all around us. And to have some stories evolve out of that. And also is interesting is the response of the people around women in our culture who are taking on these positions. I mean, I think I’ve said it a couple of times today, but I really mean it. This is the era of Secretary Clinton. And we are beginning to redefine how we are perceiving what women are doing once they turn the corner at mid-life. Are they taking on bigger jobs? Yes they are. And had we been telling stories about that for the past 100 years? Not really. So it’s a really wonderful thing to explore in my opinion. I feel happy about it.”

Read the whole interview here.