A conversation with Jill Hennessy

NBC’s “Crossing Jordan” is now in its fourth season. The series focuses on the people who work in the Boston medical examiner’s office. The stars of the series include Miguel Ferrer as Dr. Garrett Macy, the chief medical examiner; Ravi Kapoor as “Bug,” one of Macy’s intrepid forensic experts; Jerry O’Connell (“Sliders”) as police detective Woody Hoyt; and Jill Hennessy (“Law and Order,” “Judgment at Nuremberg”) as Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh, whose often unconventional and sometimes highly controversial approach to her work may create problems with her colleagues, but past experience tells them that while Jordan may go off the edge from time to time in her pursuit of the truth, the fact is, if the truth is out there, she’ll find it.

Jill Hennessy, who stars as medical examiner Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh on NBC’s “Crossing Jordan,” agrees that Jordan manifests a strong determination to find the clues that can solve murders or shed light on other mysteries involving the deaths of those who are brought to her examining table.

And, if necessary, she’ll push, press, prod and probe wherever, whenever (and sometimes whomever) she must to make that leap from the darkness of not-knowing to the enlightenment of discovery.

But she rejects a suggestion that Jordan might be a tad or so obsessive about it.”I think it’s fairer to say that Jordan is like anyone else who looks for the truth,” Hennessy says. “She knows it’s there, and she also believes that regardless of how well-hidden it may be, that it will be found if she just stays with it.”

One of the factors that may have surprised viewers when “Crossing Jordan” first debuted was the respect the characters showed to the dead, and that the bodies are never treated as specimens, but rather as persons who, although no longer alive, may be able to reveal secrets that might later be used to save other lives.

“Before we started production (on the series),” Hennessy says, “I was able to see for myself not only the dedication, but also the compassion, the caring and the respect medical examiners bring to their work. So what you see onscreen is typical of what actually happens.”

Asked how she feels about a report that Jordan Cavanaugh is becoming a role model for young women who might otherwise have never considered a career as a coroner, Hennessy says, “I think it’s wonderful that we’re able to show young people possibilities that they were (previously) unaware of.”

Jill Hennessy, who was born in Edmonton, Alberta, once played guitar and sang in the New York City subway system to support herself while pursuing her acting career.

Today, she and her husband, Paolo Mastropietro, and their young son, Marco, live both in Los Angeles and Manhattan. Asked if she ever revisits those subway stations on which she performed years ago, Hennessy says, “I do, and I have wonderful memories about how kind most people were.”

IN FOCUS: James Garner, who currently stars on ABC’s “8 Simple Rules,” will receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award for career achievement and humanitarian accomplishment in a ceremony airing Feb. 5 on TNT.

I asked Garner — who has earned a number of other awards over the years — how he felt when he learned about the SAG tribute.”Honored, of course,” he said. “While I feel I’m already a very lucky man to have been able to earn my living doing something I love, it’s nice to know that people I’ve worked with over the years, people I respect for who they are and for what they do, feel they’d like to do this for me.”

Two years ago, James Garner joined the ABC series after the unexpected death of the show’s star, John Ritter.

“I had more or less decided by then that I’d be cutting back on my acting,” he says. “But I agreed to step in and see how it would go.”

And?

“And it’s been going very well. I’m having a great time working with Katey (Sagal) and the other wonderful people on the show.”

Garner, who is one-quarter Cherokee Indian, has been active in a number of humanitarian and civic causes over the years. He helped organize Martin Luther King’s march on Washington for Civil Rights in 1963. The Korean War veteran also visited the troops in Vietnam in 1967.

He is a member of the National Support Committee of the Native American Rights Fund, and an advocate for children’s rights.