TV PREVIEW
“Paternity Court,” 1 p.m. weekdays, CW 69
The syndicated TV world is littered with failure. In the “judge” arena, many names have come and gone in recent years: Jeanine Pirro, Maria Lopez, David Young and Penny Brown Reynolds to name a few.
Lauren Lake, who oversees sophomore show “Paternity Court,” hopes to join established TV judge hosts such as Greg Mathis, Lynn Toler of “Divorce Court” and the queen of the block Judith Sheindlin with her dominant “Judge Judy” program.
Lake’s show, which recently moved to Atlanta for its sophomore year from Los Angeles, was the top new syndicated show of the 2013-14 season. It can be seen daily on CW69 in Atlanta at 1 p.m. Season two officially starts Monday.
A family law attorney by trade, Lake has a short fuse when she senses someone isn’t being honest with her, but is generally empathetic and helpful from the bench.
During a recent taping at Georgia Public Broadcasting studios in Midtown in her wood-laden faux court setting, the robed Lake faced a man who had been in jail numerous times for failing to pay child support but seemed sincere in his desire to be a father to his daughter. At the same time, he wasn’t sure if she was his daughter by DNA. Lake opened the envelope and revealed paternity test results: He wasn’t her biological dad.
The young woman started crying. The man hugged her and said, “I don’t care what anybody says. I’ll be there for you no matter what from here on out.”
Lake let the moment soak in, then said, “There is a scientific truth. And there’s also a spiritual truth. The loving truth that you are a family … It takes more than DNA to be a father. It takes love to be a daddy. You certainly have your daddy in this room.”
This is not a salacious episode of “Maury.”
Lake likes to probe family members about their situation before the test results. “We’ve got people with flawed operating systems creating children,” she said over lunch at Lobby in Atlantic Station, a few blocks from the studio. “A lot of broken people come through our doors.”
As a result, Lake herself said she sometimes gets caught up in the emotion and the pain. One woman was convinced a particular man was her father, and they even looked alike. But the paternity test proved otherwise. After the case was over, Lake went into her dressing room and “I just lost it. I really wanted him to be her father!”
Lake, a Detroit native who lived briefly in Atlanta in the late 1990s, said she was fortunate to have an intact, supportive family growing up. She said they instilled in her the confidence to become a lawyer while also pursuing other interests, including real estate, interior design and singing. (She said she’s done backup singing for the likes of P. Diddy, Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z.)
“I now have a heightened sense of feeling grateful,” Lake said. “I’m humbled by the role my parents played in my life and the love they gave me. Now with my own husband and son, I can really appreciate the level of cooperation that it takes to raise a child.”
Sadly, she said they had no shortage of potential cases, receiving more than 4,000 applications for season two: “That’s how much this issue is prevalent in our culture.”
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