Lifetime Said Hello, Molly

Since last summer, fans of Lifetime Network’s “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” have been wondering just who is the father of Molly’s child. Is it her former boss, the sensitive bookstore owner, Moss Goodman? Or is he the handsome black police detective, Nate Hawthorne?

The wait is finally over. This Friday evening at 10:30 p.m. Lifetime presents a new season of “Molly Dodd”-13 episodes this spring and 13 more episodes in the fall. At 10 p.m., Lifetime will air “Quiet on the Set: Behind the Scenes at Molly Dodd, a 30-minute documentary featuring clips and interviews with series star Blair Brown.

The actress won’t confess the identity of the baby’s father. But, she said, “we have gone even further with Molly’s fantasies and daydreams this year.”

“We have one show that’s almost entirely a fantasy. It’s completely insane. She’s sitting in the waiting room for the doctor and dreams that her son is a blind, black jazz musician. She also has a fantasy where Moss and Hawthorne get into a rumble over Molly. It’s really lunacy,” she said.

Brown recalled that she didn’t even know “Molly Dodd” had been canceled by NBC two years ago. “We had never heard from NBC,” she said. “We just figured we weren’t picked up.”

Thinking her days and nights as Molly Dodd were over, Brown flew to England to make a movie. One day, she received a call from Jay Tarses, the creator and co-executive producer of “Molly Dodd,” informing her that Lifetime was interested in doing the show. “I didn’t know cable from anything, but I told him I’d be happy to do it.”

Lifetime has rolled out the red carpet for “Molly Dodd. “They actually have a dialogue with us,” said Brown. “You feel that creatively they will defer to our gang. To be fair, NBC was not intrusive, it was only after the fact they were difficult. This is so different. You feel like you’re on the same side.”

Brown has discovered both women and men watch the series. “People just come up to me on the street and say Hello,”’ she said. “They feel that they know (Molly Dodd).”

After shooting in Central Park one day, Brown recalled that she was approached by a woman about the same age as Molly who asked the actress what she was filming. “I told her and she looked at me and had no idea what I was talking about. But I met a young Hispanic man who knew the series, and later that day, I got a cab out of the park and the driver, a Chinese man who could barely speak English, said ‘Molly Dodd, oh yeah!’ So you see, you don’t know who is watching you. You can’t predict.”

After playing Molly for the past three years, Brown feels a kinship to her alter ego. “But I feel like she’s a separate person from myself,” said Brown. “We work together really well, she and I. But I do feel she’s a separate entity. I can even go shopping for her. I did actually once go in a store and say, ‘Molly would like this.’ Then I thought to myself, This is crazy!’ ”