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When Blair Brown reported for jury duty in New York City last December, it was like an episode out of the life of her insouciant TV alter ego, Molly Dodd. The actress had just completed shooting seven episodes of the new CBS series Feds (Wednesdays, 9 p.m., beginning March 5), a drama about federal prosecutors. During voir dire, Brown told the lawyers questioning her, ''I just played the United States Attorney for the Southern District.'' Their eyebrows arched. ''Any advice for us?'' they asked. ''Yeah,'' she said. ''Get to makeup.'' Brown figures that's why she got the case: ''I think they thought, Nail her.''
Viewers who know Brown primarily as the charming title character on the 1987-91 dramedy The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd might expect that kind of polite irreverence. With Feds, those fans are in for a cold slap in the face. As head prosecutor Erica Stanton, Brown is about as cuddly as Attorney General Janet Reno, who served as something of a role model. ''Erica is kind of a hard-ass,'' Brown allows. ''But what I like about her is that she's not a neurotic, driven careerist like most successful women on TV or in movies.''
Brown certainly can't be accused of excessive drive. After generating heat in movies like 1980's Altered States, and later as Molly Dodd, the star traded her career for more time with son Robert, now 14, the only child from her long-term union with the late actor Richard Jordan. ''It wasn't like I said, 'Now I'm going to do this,''' Brown says. ''I just made choices that kept me closer to home.''
Since Dodd ended its run, home has been New York City. She appeared in occasional plays, films, and TV movies until Feds producer Dick Wolf offered her Erica Stanton; it didn't hurt that Wolf's production offices -- headquarters for Law & Order and New York Undercover -- are blocks from her Chelsea apartment. ''Blair has that leader quality,'' says Feds coexec producer Arthur Forney. ''She can walk on a set, do nothing, and take control.'' Brown, who grew up in Washington, D.C., and whose father worked for the CIA, was drawn to the idea of playing a powerful federal prosecutor.
Which came more easily than returning to TV stardom. An L.A. trip to promote Feds reminded Brown just how out of it she is. ''I have to watch more TV,'' she whispered abashedly at a CBS party. ''I don't know who these people are!'' In L.A., that's a felony -- but what jury would convict Molly Dodd?
