A mysterious bracelet gives Yancy Butler an edge against evil in TNT"s action thriller Witchblade
By Ileane Rudolph
TV Guide

"Oh s---," says Yancy Butler, the star of Witchblade, TNT's adaptation of the popular fantasy comic book, as she winces and then limps off camera, pain reflected in her green eyes. On this chilly Toronto night, the crew waits nervously as she endures three shots of Novocain in her little toe. Earlier in the day, chasing a villain at full tilt, Butler smashed the digit against some scaffolding, tearing the ligaments. Though she could pass for a biker goddess in her formfitting leather gear, she is feeling all too human.

Other than this accident - right before three scheduled days of intense karate-kicking, punch-throwing action - the 30-year-old Butler is having a great time bringing to life Det. Sara Pezzini, a revenge-seeking New York cop made nearly invincible by a shape-shifting magical gauntlet, the Witchblade. No novice at kicking butt - she appeared in 1994's "Drop Zone", NBC's Mann & Machine and CBS's Brooklyn South - the actress says she is thrilled to be playing a woman "who is both sexy and tough at the same time."

To Butler's relief, her character doesn't physically match the busty babe who decorates the comic's pages.

"After she receives the Witchblade, we want people to feel for Sara when she thinks she's losing her mind," says Butler. "But if you're wearing a push-up bra and stilettos, then who cares if you're losing your mind? You've obviously already lost it!"

The movie's executive producer, Marc Silvestri, whose company Top Cow, produces the comic book, agrees.

"We wanted to treat the source material seriously as a character piece, not anything campy," he says. "We wanted the tone and feel to be NYPD Blue meets The X-Files."

With that in mind, he hired an X-Files director, Ralph Hemecker, to shoot the movie.

"People kept mentioning the Pamela Lee model for the star, but it's not what we had in mind," adds Silvestri. "We wanted someone tough and strong, but with a layer of vulnerability. Fans won't be disappointed [in Butler]."

In today's market, comic book fans are not to be slighted. They pumped up the recent success of "X-Men"; following hot on that film's big-grossing heels, movies based on Spider-Man and two more of Silvestri's comic books, Michael Turner's Fathom and The Darkness, are in the works.

"We chose this comic book because it has a mythology behind it," says Julie Weitz, TNT's executive vice president of original proramming. "We think it's a smart, provocative, alternative type of action show."

TNT is hoping that the TV movie will draw enough fans to warrant the development of Witchblade into an original series. The network is also betting that a story about a magical talisman that has been passed down from women to woman for thousands of years will bring in female audiences, as well as the expected young men.

Of course, in the film, no man inherits or can use what's described by the producers as a "living weapon so powerful it can battle Earth's darkest forces" (although that doesn't stop a mysterious billionaire from trying to get his hands on it). Butler, a native New Yorker and former member of the National Organization for Women (and the daughter of The Lovin' Spoonful's drummer, Joe Butler), likes that just fine.

"How wonderfully innovative to have a man crave and desire what this woman has," says the actress. "Reverse envy." If there was any reverse envy behind the scenes, however, the guys aren't talking.

"Yancy is the quarterback of the set," says an admiring Will Yun Lee (Profiler), who plays Pezzini's friend and partner Danny Woo.

"From makeup to catering, she knows how to hold it all together, and that's important for a lead." Still, former Baywatch beachboy David Chokachi, who plays Jake McCartey, a laid-back ex-surfer who becomes Pezzini's new partner, admits that he'd like nothing better than for the movie to become an ongoing series.

"My character's cool because he brings levity to the whole thing." says the 32-year-old actor, "but I don't get to do a lot of action in the movie. Yancy gets it all."

The producers told him not to worry, though.

"I was told ... if we go to series, it would be the two of us against the bad boys," he says, brightening.

Several months later, over lunch in Manhattan, the action queen grimaces as she recalls hobbling through the last few days of rockin', sockin' athletics.

"It was horrible," Butler says. "When I wasn't on set, I was either getting shot up by a doctor, elevating my foot with ice or hysterically crying."

A self-described type-A personality, she made it through with some grit and "half a Percocet I finally took one night when I knew I only had one word to say in the [next day's] scene. I figured I could manage that," she says with a throaty chuckle. "It was hard, but my attitude is, you're paying me - I'm yours. I'll go till I drop."

If Witchblade becomes a series (and Butler has put other projects on hold pending the decision), that just might happen.