6/8: Kyra Sedgwick interview for new “Closer” season

Kyra Sedgwick is thrilled to finally see her character Brenda on cable's most popular show "The Closer" get married to her patient hubby Fritz when season four ended.

They were at the stage, Sedgwick said in a recent phone interview, where they either got hitched or broke up. The producers opted for the more fan friendly option of matrimony during last season’s finale.

Jon Tenney, who plays Fritz," is an amazing actor," she said. "You don't want to lose him. He's just adorable. He's like a modern day Cary Grant."

Most series that reach a fifth season would be considered “middle age” though in cable land, where fewer episodes are made per year, aging may be a bit slower.

Sedgwick hasn’t seen any sign of desperate stunt casting or unrealistic plot twists creep into the writing. “There’s always a concern about how to keep it interesting but I feel the writers consistently show us great material,” she said. “I continue to find the character fascinating, a challenge. I honestly think it’s better than ever.”

As an actress, she finds the personal stuff more compelling than the crime plots. “I love Brenda’s brilliance, her tenacity. I love her feelings about victims’ rights, her passion for what she does. But it’s her own personal struggles that interest me the most. Frankly, I think that keeps the audience coming back.”

One plotline in the episode that airs Monday night that might disturb big fans of the show is medical problems related to Brenda’s aging cat Kitty. “That’s the beginning of a long thread,” she said.

Getting metaphorical, she said the cat “represents Brenda’s independent self. That cat is the thing she had before Fritz came along.”

When I started asking her the cat’s real name and whether they use multiple cats, she jokingly castigated me for “breaking the illusion” of the fictional characters. “So coldhearted!” she said. Kitty’s real name, by the way is, well, Miss Kitty and Sedgwick suspects she is kind of old.

Not too long ago, Sedgwick’s own cat Laura died. “It’s been really hard,” she said. “Life imitating art.”

The show has a theme each season. This year, it’s change.

Two new characters will arrive. And some faces from the past will reappear including an internal affairs officer who doesn’t particularly like Brenda’s tactics. And the fallout from the Gabriel/Daniels breakup will continue with someone getting promoted.

I then moved on to some non-”Closer”-related topics such as her Tropicana commercial:

"I have never done a commercial before. It was fun." She said the stigma attached to doing commercials has faded. "I got to dance around to Tom Jones and look hot. Not a bad thing." (And it obviously helped make back some of the money she lost from Bernie Madoff. With ew.com, she said, "We didn't lose everything, we lost a pension. Some people had it so much worse.")

She also enjoyed joining the CNN table for the recent White House Correspondents dinner. (A little synergy given that CNN and TNT are sister stations.). Coincidentally, Kevin Bacon, her hubby, came along but sat at the People magazine table.

Sedgwick enjoyed Barack Obama making fun of himself: "He continues to surprise me… The idea of hearing him put on the comedian hat was so appealing to me. He was absolutely hysterical."

On TV

“The Closer,” 9 p.m. TNT, Mondays