Yancy
Butler; As Tough As Nails? Well . . .
A manicure
and a swipe of polish on neatly filed nails are about the only fashion
fixes these days for Yancy Butler. But Ms. Butler, the raspy-voiced actress
who plays Anne-Marie Kersey, the embattled police officer on the CBS-TV
drama ''Brooklyn South,'' finds them harder to get.
She
has spent too many long weeks arresting bad guys, becoming emotionally
entangled with fellow officers and tossing back shots of whisky at the
local police hangout, which of course is nowhere near Brooklyn but rather
on a set here in LA.
Like
real life officers, she must follow strict rules before the camera. Her
hair must be pulled back most of the time. (''The perp could pull a braid,''
she explained.) Her red toenails must never be exposed. And she may wear
nothing on her fingernails but clear polish.
Yet,
there she was one day in February, sneaking a very sheer pink polish at
the new Steven Alan salon in the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. ''I
talked to other female officers about their fashion,'' said Ms. Butler,
whose unusual first name is what you get when you grow up in Greenwich
Village in the 1970's and your father is Joe Butler, the drummer for the
Lovin' Spoonful.
''It's
hard,'' she said. ''You don't have a purse, so you really have to use those
pockets. And in uniform, you have to wear this really heavy belt. It makes
you want to throw your sweats on when you get home.''
Ms.
Butler, 27, is new to big-time television but not to action roles. She
played opposite Wesley Snipes in the 1994 movie ''Drop Zone'' and Jean-Claude
Van Damme in the 1993 film ''Hard Target.'' It would seem that the action
pictures would have prepared her for the first show of 'Brooklyn South''
in September, in which she saw her fiance and fellow officer, Mike, fatally
shot in the head.
''It
was so very hard to deal with,'' she said, as the manicurist worked her
nails into an oval shape. ''The idea of seeing brains in the street and
having it be someone you love. I looked at Kent State photographs to get
the inspiration for the anguish and the terror. But I am so happy to be
on a show with writing I wanted to participate in.''
She
is becoming an increasingly important member of the ensemble cast of ''Brooklyn
South,'' which as of early March was 86th of 156 prime-time shows in the
Nielsen ratings. The show keeps adding lines for her character, a Brooklynite
with a heart of gold and -- as ever so slyly revealed in a recent bedroom
scene -- an abdomen of steel. (Where do you go after your fiance has been
murdered in the pilot? To bed with another fellow officer, it seems.)
Viewers
watch her stand by her newest beau, whom she defended recently by trying
to punch a mouthy male co-worker in the face. Chances are she would stand
by her man in real life - Michael Wiseman, another actor -- with similar
vigor.
Given
her 10-hour days, she looks for little treats, like shopping in the J.
Crew catalogue or stopping in to the Beverly Hot Springs on North Oxford
Avenue for a massage and the all-important nail maintenance. ''I pretty
much make time for that weekly manicure,'' she said, adding that with her
schedule, it's getting harder to do that. ''You know, you're wearing that
uniform.'' She looked up at the woman quietly applying the blush polish.
''This is lovely, Susan,'' she said. ''Thank you.''
She
also favors Geisha Nails, a salon on Melrose Avenue, but passes by Jessica's
Nail Clinic, the salon on Sunset Boulevard where the likes of Julia Roberts
go for a polish or a fake nail tip. ''I started going there,'' she said.
''But it was like a conference at Paramount. People were screaming deals
from across the room. I saw too many people. I wasn't relaxing.''
As
her nails dried, she explained the main differences between Manhattan and
Los Angeles, where she now lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood but where
she has yet to hang any pictures in her new apartment. ''In L.A., you can't
just go out and meet people,'' she said. ''You can't get a morsel to eat
after 10 P.M., and that's heinous. And there is so much space here. I've
never grown up with so much vastness in my life.''
Time
was up. Back to collaring perps, writing up summonses and dropping her
g's, Brooklyn style. Sample line, spoken in dream sequence about her fiance's
killer: ''Don't think I don't hate ya 'cause I'm tryin' to find happiness!''
As
she made her way to the door, she called out: ''Thanks so much. You'll
never know how much I needed this!''
