Yahoo News ‘Perry Mason’s Matthew Rhys & EPs Tease Tonight’s Season 2 Finale, Possible Season 3 & Power Of Time Travel
EXCLUSIVE: “I’ve always boiled it down to there’s something very simplistic to Mason,” Perry Mason star Matthew Rhys admits about the iconic and haunted lawyer he portrays on the HBO prequel series. “It’s not necessarily his sense of justice but sense of right and wrong,” the Emmy winner adds. “What is right and wrong, and how he goes about righting that, righting that wrong, is, at times, very questionable. But fundamentally, his sense of pure form justice is so strong that everything else becomes very difficult, and the playing of that was just magic.”
With the Season 2 finale of the series now steered by Michael Begler and Jack Amiel as showrunners and Team Downey set to drop tonight on the premium cabler and HBO Max, the Americans alumni finds his character in some dramatic territory in and out of court in Depression-era Los Angeles.
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Defending the Gallardo brothers in the case of the murder of aspiring baseball team owner Brooks McCutcheon (Tommy Dewey), a deeply disillusioned Mason and law partner Della Street (Juliet Rylance) in Season 2 find themselves straddling City of Angels high society, racial divides, institutional corruption and their own looming financial crisis – not to mention an underhanded scheme to funnel funds to Imperial Japan’s war machine. With The Knick creators Begler and Amiel taking over for Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald in the sophomore season, the series executive produced by Robert Downey Jr and Susan Downey has been going deeper into the grit and despair of 1930s America, but building bridges to our own era too.
Ahead of tonight’s finale, Rhys, Begler and Susan Downey spoke with me about where Perry Mason is at, how it got there, and where the show could be going if a third season is in the offering.
DEADLINE: Matthew, for you, what was the evolution of Perry over these first seven episodes of Season 2, and for you, where do you see him going, going forward now?
MATTHEW RHYS: My greatest … not concern, but what I was most interested in is where we find Perry at the beginning of Season 2 and that we did leave him, at the end of Season 1, in a certain position that might be deemed comfortable. You know, all three were in the office and ready to go, and you know, all the garden was relatively rosy, and what I loved is when we find him again in Season 2, it’s not the case.
DEADLINE: How do you mean?
RHYS: Well, Perry is suffering heavily from impostor syndrome. You know he’s hiding so much from Della, you know, the promise of work that for Paul hasn’t worked out. Part of what I think is so great about this show is the odds against each one of them is stacked quite heavily and the conflict is in abundance, is flowing like champagne, and so, then, you have a mountain to climb, and that, to me, was fantastic.
DEADLINE: With all the evolution of the title character in Season 2, and changes to the show with Michael and Jack now showrunners, new roles so to speak for Juliet and Chris Chalk’s characters, bigger roles for Diarra Kilpatrick, Justin Kirk and the introduction of Jee Young Han as Marion Kang, Mason’s new secretary, you’ve basically kept the case-a-season format. Why continue that from Season 1 and will we see it in potential further seasons?
DOWNEY: I think that for us in crafting even the concept, we knew that we wanted to tell a single case, and the ability to do it over eight episodes allowed us to really dig into character and theme, and our whole thing is always about how can we create a case that is going to challenge the characters? A case in and of itself and the cleverness and the twists and turns isn’t enough. It needs to inform something for our characters. It needs to put them through a gauntlet that gets them to evolve over the course of the season, and I think that’s what Jack and Michael did so brilliantly this time.
The other thing is, for us, it’s a little bit less about the who done it. It’s an important component, but it’s not the “aha” moment at the end. It’s not the get someone to turn and acknowledge guilt on the stand. It’s, at some point, we’re going to reveal it, but so much more is about why, and it leads to the larger questions of context. It leads to the larger themes that we end up exploring that are relevant today. So, I do think that the sort of single examination of a single case over the season offers so much more for our characters to dig into, and so much more for us to explore.
DEADLINE: With that, Michael, what was it like for you and Jack to step into the show, this iconic character and all the expectations that accompany both?
BEGLER: Well, I mean, the great thing for me is that the table was so well set up from the first season. I mean what they accomplished, what Team Downey and what Ron and Rolin accomplished in the first season, they created such great strong characters and in a way, doing an origin story made it a little easier for us to step into the role and to take it from there.
DEADLINE: Why?
BEGLER: Because now, with Perry being a full-time lawyer, it was a great jumping-off point, and what I loved was we weren’t ready to go full-throttle on him in terms of, okay, now here’s the Perry Mason of your grandparents. There was all that great impostor syndrome to play with, and it’s stuff that we talked about real early on, both with Susan and with Matthew about the character, and I thought that that, starting in the place, was the great sort of germ to grow the character and the season from.
DEADLINE: Matthew, you mentioned Perry’s imposter syndrome. Michael just brought it up. A part of that with him now a full-time lawyer, haggling in the courts and needing to make a mark and a buck, we see him as a man willing to bend, even break the rules. For you as an actor, what were some of the challenges, or what was some of the excitement of that?
RHYS: I think from day one on this project, the excitement has always been the layering of this character. There’s far more going on than any moment when you first come across him, and that was the beauty at each turn. When Perry is suffering from this impostor syndrome, suffering from what’s happened with Emily Dodson, until he goes, you know what, I’m not good enough to do criminal law. I don’t want to do criminal because of what happens, therefore, I will do these civic cases. And civil becomes uncivil, and as a result of that, he’s then dealing with things that absolutely go against the grain of his nature, which is this sense of true justice about hardworking people getting screwed.
So, it just keeps piling it on top of Mason, building this pressure cooker.
DEADLINE: How does that work for you creating this character anew, so to speak?
RHYS: I’ve always boiled it down to there’s something very simplistic to Mason. It’s not necessarily his sense of justice but sense of right and wrong. What is right and wrong, and how he goes about righting that, righting that wrong, is, at times, very questionable. But fundamentally, his sense of pure form justice is so strong that everything else becomes very difficult, and the playing of that was just magic.
DEADLINE: In that context, what can we expect from the Season 2 finale?
RHYS: Justice.
BEGLER: I would say an answer to the statement that was raised by Burger in Episode 1 of this season, which is there is no true justice, there is only the illusion of justice. I think we get the true answer to that.
DEADLINE: Speaking of justice, is a Season 3 coming?
DOWNEY: Yeah. I mean wouldn’t that be nice? Look, we’re focused on landing the plane here with Season 2. At the same time, I think that Matthew and all the other people populating it in front of the screen, all our people behind the scenes, have built this incredible world that I know we could continue to tell really interesting stories about. We would be lying if we didn’t say we’ve certainly been talking to Michael a ton about a third season, but our fate rests in the hands of others.
DEADLINE: Fair enough. Actually about the hands of others, Matthew, what was with that hilarious and incredibly lame fight between Perry and Shea Whigham’s Pete Strickland that we saw in the penultimate episode last week?
RHYS: (Laughs) Terrible. I mean this has been brought up to me this week already, and I like to remind people of Colin Firth and Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones, which is a far, far, inferior fight to ours. I think it was just a testament to Shea and myself’s acting that we could sell it that badly.
DOWNEY: We try for some giggles
BEGLER: Listen, when we wrote the fight, this is basically how I pictured it because it’s real. Fights are messy. Most fights aren’t so staged. It’s these two guys, they’re not pros by any stretch of the imagination.
RHYS: How dare you?
BEGLER: Well, Matthew, you are, but I’m talking about Perry, the character, that he wasn’t, and that’s what I love about it that. it is just these two guys, just they’re getting out … it’s almost like they’re not getting out their anger at each other, just their frustrations in life, but they’re using each other as punching bags to a certain extent.
I’ll just say, right, the pre-fight, how little these men have to say to each other and will say to each other, and how much they will open up. Strickland doesn’t say very much, but it’s enough, you know? That’s his apology, and it’s a 1930s male apology, and I really sort of appreciated that, and hopefully, you know, Matthew and Shea appreciated it, too.
DOWNEY: I’ll just add, one of my favorite scenes is what happens after. I love when Perry has to bring him to the office and convince the other two to let him participate. I just thought that was … I love everything about it, and I love when you tell him at the end, like after you’ve gotten everyone to kind of like agree, and then he turns, and you, shut the f*ck up, like just one final reprimand for him.
RHYS: You want to lose two fights today?
BEGLER: To me, in writing, and it’s really important to have those moments because that’s human. If you don’t have the chance to breathe, it’s too much, you know? All the shows that I admire can find that balance, and I think that that was what we all strive for.
DEADLINE: One human in particular is no longer a part of Perry Mason after being such a big part of Season 1 and that is of course E.B., aka John Lithgow. Matthew, what has it been like this round not having him as Perry’s mentor/foil? Did it change the way you did things?
RHYS: Well, look, I think he was such an enormously influential figure in Mason’s life, so there were little things that I tried to keep alive.
DEADLINE: Such as?
RHYS: You know when I was talking to the props department about certain things that I wanted, it was all in relation to him, basically, and the influence that he wielded. I have to remind myself that there would’ve been a lot of … not necessarily instruction but kind of osmosis from him as to who the lawyer that Mason becomes. So, he’s very much present, you know, in the office, alone, his presence is still incredibly everlasting. So, no, his influence and power wielded deep into Season 2.
DEADLINE: Susan, there’s a big canvas used here in Season 2. In what is an ensemble at its heart, big talent like Hope Davis joins, Diarra Kilpatrick took on a bigger role, there is greater examination of issues of gender and identity, and we get into geopolitical issues with what is then Imperial Japan. Why did you take that approach this year?
DOWNEY: It goes back to the original inception, when we decided to take on the Perry Mason title to begin with. Robert had very specific feelings that he wanted to go back to the source material and the time period of the books, and then with that, looking at our key characters, with Perry, Paul and Della, he really wanted them to feel like outsiders, going against a system in their own ways, which is where the idea for Paul to be Black, where the idea for Della to be queer, came from. I think that this season, what we wanted to do, since we had built this foundation of character, is then explore each of them deeper, and that enables us to go into areas that open up representation more.
How can we open that up but make it realistic. We’re always very conscientious. We’re not starting with we want to tell some big message that resonates today. We want to tell a story that’s true to all the research that we’ve done and true to the time but will resonate for today, as well. And that just enables us and forced us to want to look at different areas.
I think the other piece I would say is the ’30s is very interesting because of the Depression. I think even as we get maybe to the mid and later ’30s, you feel the oncoming war, but we always wanted to up the stakes of it. Again, personally, you have to be most invested. Those are the stakes that matter the most, but on the larger scope of going from something that is important to the city and then how do you make it resonate beyond that? How can it reverberate beyond that, hence getting into the sort of overall scheme of it all?
DEADLINE: Matthew, to that, you mentioned earlier about talking to the props department as a part of the continuing influence of E.B. in the series. How enveloping is that sense of being in the L.A. of the 1930s, the Great Depression in the show for you? How does that play out in your performance?
RHYS: I mean I truly credit HBO with almost time travel because their commitment to it, and you know this extends to everyone else, it is 100% on this show. You walk into these enormously dressed sets, which is, you know, for the amount of green screen that’s out there these days, I think we use very little. So, it feels like an immersive experience, and the smallest of things, the fedora goes on, you got a cigarette. You’re back as that kid playing those Chandler-esque moments again. You cannot but help be transported to that time. It’s a privilege, but it’s also a real luxury as an actor.
DEADLINE: One aspect of that I have found compelling about the series, especially have been raised on the original in syndication as a kid, is just what a working-class experience it is. People struggle, bills do not get paid, expectations are fought for and sometimes, often, dashed, and the socioeconomic development of L.A. in this particular time is so much a character…
BEGLER: I mean, we’re deep in the Depression. We’re in the worst year of the Depression. So, everybody is, beyond the very rich like the Lydells of the world, everybody’s trying just to survive. For Perry and Della, you know, they’re a case away from shuttering that office, and they know that. So, I think that’s part of the drive, and the drive of everyone in the show. They all know that their backs are against the wall. Not only our three mains, but everyone, LAPD Detective Gen Holcomb (Eric Lange), Strickland, everyone
Everyone has that undercurrent of worry of how bad is this going to get, and how can I keep my head above water? I think the the fortunate and unfortunate thing of this show in terms of the stories that we’re telling is how much it resonates with what’s happening today that how little humanity changes. I think that that’s sort of a very special, as I call it the ripple effect of what we’re doing. It lends itself to that without even trying.
DOWNEY: Your observation’s an interesting one in terms of the working-class nature of it because this season in particular, Jack and Michael wanted to shine a light on that by having the juxtaposition of the kind of high and low. You have the world of Lydell and Camilla, the sort of have and the have nots, and that was a very intentional theme that brought us to the beauty of the palatial places in Beverly Hills all the way into the Hoovervilles.
It allowed the examination of in this time, what do people, no matter, honestly, what the socioeconomic thing is, what do they do to survive? What are they willing to do to survive when they feel they’re backed into a corner or see an opportunity, what choices do they make? A lot of it is also seeped in the concept of family. Whether people have a family or not, have a strong bond with a family or not, what they would do for their father, for their son, for their brother, and I think that, again, to me, those are all very human explorations that are at the heart of this Perry Mason.
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