Ex-'ER' star returns to TV in legal drama

NEW YORK -- If not for the absence of an all-important "o," Julianna Margulies might never have considered doing "Canterbury's Law."

On this new Fox legal drama -- which begins tonight at 7 -- she plays Elizabeth Canterbury, a fiery defense attorney who, after hours, is falling apart.

"She's dark, complicated, funny and screwed-up," Margulies says.

She might even overshadow nurse Carol Hathaway, the character Margulies played so impressively on "ER" from 1994 to 2000.

And though Canterbury practices law in Providence, R.I., "Canterbury's Law" was providentially shot in New York, where Margulies, 41, makes her home with attorney husband Keith Lieberthal and their 7-week-old son.

A three-episode arc on "The Sopranos" turned Margulies loose as Julianna Skiff, a New Jersey real-estate agent with a heroin habit and lousy taste in men. Guest starring on the celebrated New York-based mob drama left Margulies eager to return to TV with her own series.

"But I was looking for a New York show," she says, "and preferably cable." She reasoned that cable would call for fewer episodes per season, meaning higher quality and a less demanding schedule than with a broadcast-network series.

"Then I got the script for 'Canterbury's Law. I read it on a Saturday night." She liked it, and liked the fact that it was from Denis Leary and Jim Serpico, producers of "Rescue Me," the acclaimed series about New York firefighters that airs on the FX cable network.

"On Monday, I called my agent and said, 'I'll do it.'

"He said, 'But it's Fox.'

"I said, 'No, it's FX.' I looked at the cover letter again. Whoever it was who wrote it had left out the 'o.'

"When I realized the network was Fox," she says, "it was a tough decision."

Nothing against Fox, the broadcast sibling of FX. Margulies had just been recognizing the 22-episode grind of most broadcast series -- in particular her six "ER" seasons.

"You can't make 22 home runs. On 'ER,' I used to think we managed a good 15 or 16 each season. But every now and then I'd go, 'Guys! Don't blow up the hospital again!'

"If I had known in the first place that 'Canterbury's Law' was a series for Fox," she declares, "I probably wouldn't have even read the pilot."