On the set of “Damages,” Glenn Close’s dog steals the show.

So at home is the actress at Steiner Studios that she brings Jake, a terrier, down to the set with her. And Jake, a little friskly ball of white fur, hams it up. He gets between the covers of the bed used by Close’s character, legal bad ass Patty Hewes. He sits in a niche in the wall of Patty’s living room where a piece of sculpture would ordinarily be displayed.

“He’s my new piece of art,” Close explains to a crew member. “They make sculptures that look like real animals.”

Jake’s improv has been made into a short video and saved on the laptop Close keeps in her cozy dressing room at Steiner. She laughs wildly as she shows her off her pet, one of two she brings to work (the other is named Bill). With two white ceramic figurines of terriers on display on the window ledge, it’s clear that Close is a dog person. The dressing room has so many personal mementos it seems like a home away home. Framed photos of the actress with her daughter, Annie, and her husband, David Shaw, are hung on the walls. On a small desk next to the laptop, she keeps a tiny framed photo of her with the stars of the 1985 Michael Frayn play “Benefactors” – Sam Waterston, Mary Beth Hurt and Simon Jones. In one corner there is a silver scooter that she rides when needs to travel from one vast soundstage to another.

Glenn Close is at home on “Damages” in a way that she has never been before. It’s her show – a fact vividly illustrated when she walked away with an Emmy for Best Actress in a drama series – and even though the show wobbled a bit creatively in its first season, her sharp, precise, creative stamp is felt everywhere.

“I collaborate with the writers very closely about words, clarity and logic,” she says quietly.

The collaboration was so successful that notoriously clubby Emmy voters awarded New York theater actor Zeljko Ivanek a statuette for his memorable turn as suicidal lawyer Ray Fiske, Patty’s opponent last season.

And now “Damages” returns for a second season of legal entanglements and mystery, with Patty Hewes triumphant after wiping the floor with her previous adversary, Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), who survived his gunshot wound. As the season gets under way, Patty is in a good place – the Frobisher case brought in millions to her firm – and a bad place – she is literally haunted by Fiske’s suicide and wracked with guilt for almost having her employee Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) bumped off. She is deciding which case to take on when a “brilliant but unstable” scientist, Daniel Purcell (William Hurt), contacts her. Purcell is the nexus of a story line that incorporates murder, corporate greed, a hidden child and an intimate connection with Patty.

Close has not worked with Hurt since they were in the seminal 1980s movie “The Big Chill.” Being with him again, she says, was like “slipping into a very comfortable slipper.” And, she adds, “he’s so handsome.”

“Chill” fans will feel their youths pass in front of their eyes as Close and Hurt converse and confront each other at waterfront mansions and in front of the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Fort Greene Park, a short walk from Steiner’s location on Washington Avenue in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But Hurt’s not the only Oscar-winning showbiz survivor on the show this year. Marcia Gay Harden plays Hurt’s mistress, attorney Claire Maddox.

Timothy Olyphant shaves off the moustache he wore on the HBO western “Deadwood” to a return in a contemporary role, as Wes Krulik, a loner Ellen Parsons meets at grief counseling. Close says that Daryl Hannah will also be on board in “a very creepy role.”

Creators Todd Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman will also use many flashbacks and flashforwards to tell their story. Close thinks her team excels at creating an air of mystery. “The writers do a great job leading the audiences down a road that they think they know what’s gonna happen, but it turns out that it’s not going to happen,” she says. “But it’s not manipulation. When you look back, you go, ‘Oh, of course. I just didn’t see it.” You’re used to going to a movie and you know in the first five minutes how it’s going to end because it’s straight formula. Right now, there’s a story line where something happens to [Patty] and I have no clue who’s the perpetrator – and I don’t know if they do either.”

When Close picked up her Emmy, she seemed positively radiant, owning her television stardom in ways that other actresses who’ve crossed over from the film and stage world don’t, as if they’re just moonlighting on basic cable. Close was proud to be in the same company as Helen Mirren and Judi Dench-“they’ve done everything,” she says. When the first season wrapped, she didn’t rush back to the stage or a movie set, but simply “lived my life.” That includes summers in Scarborough, Maine, and winters on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and in Bedford. One of the major reasons she decided to do the show was that it was shooting in New York City.

“I wouldn’t have done it any other place. I adored doing ‘The Shield’ and it was a fabulous show to be on, but it was five months away from home,” she says. “I’ve been doing this for thirty-five years. It’s just too costly.”

And rather than playing the “bitchy mother-in-law” role that most actresses her age are offered, she gets to play a part that’s as satisfying as anything she did in her movie heyday.

“There’s a scene I did this year- I don’t even want to tell you what character it was with – it was one of the most satisfying scenes I’ve done in my career. A series of scenes with a character and a whole different side of Patty. It was like playing the scene of crying in the shower in ‘The Big Chill.’ Or the Marquise in ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ ruining her boudoir at the end of the movie when she hears [John Malkovich’s character] is dead. Those scenes are private moments between the audience and the character. It’s such an intimate exchange.”

Then there are the neighbors at Steiner to entertain her. “We had the most fun when the Muppet Christmas special was being done. Kermit came and visited us on the set and I have him a picture of him signing some legal papers. He wanted to sue Miss Piggy,” she says with a laugh.

DAMAGES

Wednesday, 10 p.m., FX