1980s TV Shows: A Trip Down Memory Lane with… Michele Greene (Abby Perkins in “L.A. Law”)

Exclusive Interview by Karen Beishuizen

“L.A. Law” was a legal drama series created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher. It aired on NBC for eight seasons from 1986 to 1994. The show starred Harry Hamlin, Corbin Bernsen, Jill Eikenberry, Michael Tucker, Susan Dey, Susan Ruttan, Alan Rachins, Richard Dysart, Jimmy Smits, and Michele Green who played Abby Perkins, a young and upcoming lawyer who juggled career with motherhood.

KB: “L.A. Law”: What kind of show was it?

“L.A. Law”, to me, was about the complicated lives of attorneys in a major metropolis like Los Angeles, with the cultural and economic diversity that makes the city unique. The show dealt not only with the upscale, monied, glamorous side of the city but also the underbelly of crime, inequity, struggle. It was an exploration of lawyers as people, with faults and failings as well as heroism and empathy. Most legal shows to that point always cast the lawyers as the good guys fighting injustice, not really showing them as manipulative, dishonest, greedy, etc. and “L.A. Law” did.

KB: How did you get the part as Abby Perkins?

I had worked on a short lived series with Steven Bochco three years prior to “L.A. Law”, called “Bay City Blues”. It was expected to be a huge hit and it was a failure, in the initial ratings. I honestly think that if Steven had allowed the show to run longer and built an audience, it would’ve been a hit but he pulled it when it wasn’t an immediate breakout success. It had great actors: Dennis Franz, Mykelti Williamson, Perry Lang, Patrick Cassidy, Ken Olin, etc. Excellent writers, including David Milch. Steven remembered me from that show and offered me the role of Abby Perkins who was a 180 change from what I played on “Bay City Blues”.

KB: What did you like about the character and how did you make it your own?

I liked that Abby was at the beginning of her career in law, juggling parenthood, a bad marriage to a guy who was super toxic and undermining, which so many professional women deal with ALL the time! She was so different from the other characters who were very self-assured, very confident in their abilities and much older, as well. She was trying too hard to keep up, sometimes doing okay, sometimes failing and I loved her humanity in that way. I did my best to really flesh out her backstory and her history to make all of her moments have resonance and emotional weight. I was also a very young actress, 24 years old when we shot the pilot, so I still worked ‘hard’…now, of course, a lot of what I did back then just comes as naturally as breathing. I had only been out of college for three years at that point!

KB: Did you and the other actors got legal training to make it look believable on screen?

I don’t remember any of us seeking legal training to prepare for the show. We were fortunate that several of the writers had been lawyers so we could ask them if we had any questions.

KB: What did it look like on the set from getting the script to filming?

The longest and toughest day was always shooting the conference room scenes. They took all day, doing the same lines, the same material, everyone stuck in that room for HOURS. It was fun also since it gave us all the chance to be together and catch up. The show ran very smoothly in the first few years, it became more complicated when we had new producers come in and then the hours got much longer and there were constant changes but the first few years were great.

KB: Where was the show filmed?

The show was filmed on the Fox lot near Century City.

KB: Do you have a favorite episode?

I don’t have any favorite episode. I really loved so many of them and so many of the cast members were really exceptional in certain episodes that it’s hard to pick a favorite.

KB: Are you still in touch with the other actors on the show?

I stay in touch with Harry, we’ve done a number of productions at the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles together in recent years. Susan Ruttan and I are pals, we’re just both super busy and don’t have a lot of time to connect. We did a great little project together during the pandemic. But it’s such a pleasure when we all have a chance to meet up. We all got along so well because there were no jerks in the cast!

KB: Looking back now, would you have played Abby differently?

I think I would have made Abby more of a boundary pusher, made her more daring and confident but perhaps that’s because I feel more that way now than I did back then. I really loved the character, even with all of her insecurities but as a role, positioning myself as an actress, I might have made some different choices. But I also had horrible agents at that time and they were no help in any way post “L.A. Law”.

KB: How do you explain that the show is still so beloved even after 40+ years?

I think the show struck a chord with the audience. It had a human element to it that was really engaging and of course, the cast of a show is really all about chemistry and how that works with the audience. There is no way to predict that, to create that, it is like alchemy. The dynamic between the actors, the overall composition of each episode… it was just a unique, special series.

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