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Yancy Butler, star of TNT's upcoming television movie Witchblade, told SCI FI Wire that she signed on for the starring role of NYPD detective Sara Pezzini before reading the Top Cow comic series of the same name on which the film is based. "I met with everybody, and then got the comic, and I totally panicked," Butler said of the comic books, which feature a buxom, scantily clad heroine festooned with spiky armor.

"I thought, what the hell?" Butler recalled. "Dog collars, well-endowedness, metal. I'm very happy our director chose to go in another direction." In the movie version of the comic, director Ralph Hemecker has toned down the more lurid elements and grounded the supernatural story more in reality, Butler said with relief. "It had the potential to not be cool. And it's so not cheesy. I'm so happy."

Like the comic, Witchblade tells the story of Pezzini and her inadvertent acquisition of a mysterious armored gauntlet that gives her supernatural powers. But the movie is "realistic and potent," said Butler. "You care about her, because we're playing it as if she were real, asking, 'What the hell is this thing?' She becomes [like] an audience member. Both of us don't know what's going on. [At the end of the film,] she still doesn't know what's going on. It's not better or worse [than the comic], but much more user-friendly."

Butler is no stranger to either cop roles or fantasy, having played a police officer in CBS's Brooklyn South and a robot in NBC's Mann & Machine. "People have asked me what it's like to be the star of Witchblade. But the God's honest truth is, I'm simply wearing the star on my wrist. What I loved about [Pezzini], and why I wanted to play this part and why I got interested, is her [dual] nature, which we would all do well to admit to ourselves that we have. She's extremely vulnerable and extremely sad where we pick up her life, but she's extremely tough and can kick some real royal ass."

Witchblade premieres on TNT at 8 p.m. Aug. 27. The two-hour film is being considered as a pilot for a potential series, depending on how the telefilm does.