An offbeat personality, a tough-as-nails approach and a track record as one of the country's leading investigators: These are just a few of the traits exhibited by Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, played by Golden Globe Award winner Kyra Sedgwick.
In her first lead role in a dramatic series, Sedgwick plays a CIA-trained detective who has been brought from Atlanta to Los Angeles to head up the Priority Murder Squad, a special unit of the LAPD that handles sensitive, high-profile murder cases. Brenda is tapped to lead the team because she is a world-class interrogator, and when it comes to obtaining confessions, she is a closer. But her quirky attitude and hard-nosed approach to her job sometimes rub her colleagues the wrong way, as does the fact that she is a tough-minded Southern woman in a department dominated by men.