Names and faces

A lawyer for Amanda Bynes said Thursday that he thinks her New York bong-throwing case will be resolved soon. The troubled actress didn’t appear during a brief court appearance in Manhattan; she remains in a psychiatric hospital in California. She was charged earlier this year with reckless endangerment and marijuana possession after building managers called police because they said she was smoking pot in the lobby of her Manhattan apartment. When officers entered her 36th-floor apartment, they said they saw her heave a bong out the window. The 27-year-old Hairspray star later appeared in court in a disheveled blond wig and said she didn’t do anything wrong. It was one episode in a string of erratic incidents involving the star in recent months. She was institutionalized in August after authorities said she set a small fire in the driveway of a home in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Bynes pleaded innocent to drunken driving in California, and her attorney there argued Wednesday that she needed a competency hearing because she was unfit for trial. The New York judge on Thursday said Bynes didn’t need a separate mental-health hearing. Her attorney, Gerald Shargel, said she remained hospitalized, and he wished her a speedy recovery. He said he’s working with prosecutors to resolve the case. That could mean charges would be dropped if she agrees to stay out of trouble.

Betsy Brandt says the intensity of the final Breaking Bad episodes “physically affected” her. “There were days shooting - these last eight episodes especially - I just felt sick. My chest would get all tight, and I just felt awful,” she said. Brandt plays Marie Schrader, sister-in-law to chemistry teacher-turned-drug lord Walter White (Bryan Cranston) on the show, which airs its series finale Sunday on AMC at 8 p.m. CDT. In an interview Wednesday she said she did a lot of crying, too. “After we’d get a take then I’d just sort of start sobbing because you gotta get it out before you go home,” she said. The actress says the weightiness of Breaking Bad had a lot to do with her decision to take on the comedy The Michael J. Fox show as her next role. Brandt says when she read the Breaking Bad finale script, she told show creator Vince Gilligan it was “the perfect ending for this show.” She’s not giving out any hints, not that people really want to know. “It’s funny. They want me to tell but they really don’t want me to tell,” Brandt said. “People are crazy, ‘Tell me. Don’t tell me. Tell me. Don’t. No. Please stop.’ That’s kind of what it is.”

Front Section, Pages 2 on 09/27/2013

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