Becoming a TV judge seems, in her own words, to have “mellowed” Jeanine Pirro, who long added color to New York’s state political scene with a fiery stint as Westchester County’s district attorney, spiced with a brief Senate run opposite Hillary Clinton and a rocky marriage to a man with alleged mafia connections. “I’m in a very good place,” she tells the Times.
Pirro has left her husband, and spends three days a week in Chicago, where the CW's Judge Jeanine Pirro is filmed on the same lot as Jerry Springer. She's reined in her liberal use of expletives for TV, while gleefully haranguing defendants despite her own troubles with the law. “Life really is a series of ups and downs,” she says. “I’ve made the journey many times.” (More Jeanine Pirro stories.)