When you grow up as the daugಌhter of disco queen Donna Summer, you might expect your childhood to be bathed in strobe lights and the family soundtrack to include one of mom’s blockbuster hits. Brooklyn Sudano, the second-eldest of Summer’s three children, says it wasn’t all glamour, though.
“We were put to work,” says Sudano, who is co-starring in NBC’s new action series “Taken.” Riding on the tour bus, she and her younger sister Amanda (their father is singer-songwriter Bruce Sudano) did such “grunt work” asღ steaming the band’s clothes, the actress tel﷽ls The Post. “We had a few summers where we did that. Our parents wanted us to have an understanding of what it was like to put on a production.”
Traveling in those circles, it was hard not to have “music be a big part of your life,” she says. Sudano stresses that for “m♉y sisters and I, [Summer] was mom first and foremost. At the end of the day, we’re a family and that was always a highlight and everything else was secondary.” (Summer died of cancer in 2012 at age 63).
Amanda chose the life of a professional musician, singing with her hꦺusband Abner Ramirez in the duo Johnny Swim, but Sudano, 36, picked acting over singing. On “Taken,” she plays Asha Flynn, an environmental lawyer who crosses paths with the show’s heroic he-man, Bryan Mills (Clive Standen), after her best friend is murdered in the first episode. The dead girl also happens to be Mills’ sister. In subsequent episodes, Asha tries to understand why her friend was the only person killed in a terrorist attack on a train carrying 90 passengers, but the writers unveiled one ulterior motive when Bryan answered Asha’s knock on his door clad only in a wet towel.
“There’s room to grow,” says Sudano of the pair’s romantic potential. “Their relationship starts in a very vulnerable place. They’ve both experienced this mass♚ive tragedy. He’s a rugged guy. Asha is more refined. Part of her role in his life is to soften his edges, chip away at his guardedness.”
Sudano s꧂poke to The Post from Paris, where she was promoting the series at a screening attended by Luc Besson, who wrote and co-produced the original “Taken” movie starring Liam Neeson in 2008. While her husband, luxury goods designer Mike McGlaflin, remains at home in LA taking care of their daughter, she took in the Louis Vuitton fashion show, staged among the statuary at the Louvre and has been visiting with friends. The actress, who was named after the New York City borough where her father was born, eyed a few of the runway creations but didn’t buy anything.
“I’m 💞waiting until Season 2 to spend my load,” she says optimistically.
“Taken” 10 p.m. Monday on NBC