Skye P. Marshall, Jennie Snyder Urman, Kat Coiro and Kathy Bates talk embracing a 75-year-old woman as their superhero
“Matlock” centers on the unexpected, yet profound friendship between Kathy Bates’ Madeline Matlock and Skye P. Marshall’s Olympia — a connection that extends beyond the screen between Bates and Marshall to include creator Jennie Snyder Urman and director Kat Coiro.
“I always imagined the show as a love story between these two women — I always pitched it that way,” Snyder Urman told TheWrap during a new installment of How She Did It, presented by CBS Studios. “I said, ‘That is the central love story and we’re going to treat friendship that way because it is life-sustaining.’”
“I always find that the English language lacks this word that’s not friendship and it’s not love, and it’s not romance … it’s something deeper,” Coiro said, noting the feeling is shared between the four women both on and off camera of the CBS drama. “It’s a driving force under the show to redefine that deep female friendship that is love, that is transcendent and that is powerful and doesn’t really have a name.”
In addition to redefining that deep female friendship, “Matlock” crafts a new type of superhero in 75-year-old Madeline Matlock, who re-enters the workforce as she seeks justice for her late daughter at law firm Jacobson Moore, which Matlock believes was responsible for covering up documents that could’ve taken opioids off the market years earlier. “Even though Matty is in dire straits, I created another side to this character: somebody who’s all business,” Bates said.
“Somebody who’s lived 75 years has so much that they’ve gone through and have negotiated,” Snyder Urman said. That negotiation resonated with Marshall, who said she found a lot in common “with the storyline of a woman in her 70s who is not invisible. What she does matters.”
Matty and Olympia’s friendship gets turned on its head, however, when Olympia learns Matty has been lying about her identity in an emotional series of scenes towards the end of the season. Bates points to a moment when Olympia asks Matty to tell her about Ellie, noting, “I felt that was like a big step up to another part of the mountain.”
“When we’re in a scene together, the acting is gone and I just want to listen to what she’s saying and authentically respond to that in the moment,” Marshall said. “I knew that I was covered. I knew I was protected, I was looked after.”
Coiro noted the level of trust between the women is rare on set, especially given the lack of sets with predominantly women in front of and behind the camera. “There’s no ego,” Coiro said. “It’s just like, ”How do we make the best show? How do we make the best scene?’”
“It’s like putting on a comfortable pair of jeans,” Bates said. “Everything’s cool.”
