BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Dana Delany moves from “Desperate Housewives” to her own series, “Body of Proof,” playing a testy medical examiner who used to be a neurosurgeon until an accident left her unable to operate.Delany said the role hearkens back to her days on “China Beach,” one of my all-time favorite series. Read how the roles are similar after the jump. …

Delany’s Colleen McMurphy on “China Beach” could be a little bit prickly, though she was a softy underneath. In the “Body of Proof” pilot viewers get a glimpse of the softer side of Dr. Megan Hunt when she’s reflecting on her failure as a mother/wife.

“This character feels very close to me,” Delany said. “You all know how I like to play complicated characters. There’s a whole range of things to be played there. … She’s complicated, smart, definitely complex.”

In addition, Delany had a Hunt-like experience.

“I was hit by a bus two weeks before we started filming and broke two fingers and my car was totaled, exactly like the character in the pilot,” she said.  It happened in Santa Monica, Calif., at 8:30 a.m. when she was making a left-hand turn on a yellow light. ‘The irony is when I got out of the car, the bus driver said to me, ‘I know who you are. Can I have your autograph?’”

Delany said she was declared at fault: “Something we should all know is when the light is yellow it’s a free-for-all and it was my fault. If I’d turned in a red light, it would not have been my fault.”

Producer Matthew Gross promised “Body of Proof,” which had a generic pilot that presented a Hunt so strident she was off-putting, would be a new take on the medical examiner.

“This is not your father’s Quincy,” he said.

“But I do look a lot like Jack Klugman,” Delany added jokingly.

Source