Kathy Bates was skeptical.
For how many episodes of CBS’ hit reimagining of the legal drama Matlock could her character, Madeline “Matty” Matlock, get away with lying about her identity to her fellow lawyer?
“I questioned whether that would be realistic in real life, that somebody could do that,” she admitted on Entertainment Weekly’s The Awardist podcast. So the Oscar- and Emmy-winner consulted with a friend who works in the corporate world, wondering if someone could successfully execute Matty’s extensive plan that not only includes a fake name but a fake accent, a fake New York City apartment, fabricated stories about her husband and family, even fake websites to throw off anyone at work who might Google her name — all under the guise of infiltrating Jacobson Moore, the law firm that she thinks is responsible for her daughter’s opioid addiction and eventual death.
Bates’ friend confirmed such a scheme was possible. “I was really surprised, and I respect his opinion a lot,” she says. “I was nervous about that. I’d think, at the beginning, would people go along with this? Would they believe this? But I think [creator Jennie Snyder Urman] crafted it so cleverly, with her getting in under discriminatory ageism and wheedling her way in.”
It’s part of what made the first season so compelling from week to week, not just to see if Matty would get caught, but to see what she would get away with. And — spoiler alert! — she does get caught by an incredibly smart and observant colleague: her boss and junior partner at the firm, Olympia Lawrence, played by Skye P. Marshall.
While each episode ends with a flashback showing how Matty figured out how to win a case — or how she was able to fool her colleagues yet again and obtain new information in her quest to find documents within Jacobson Moore that would implicate the firm in a cover-up with its pharmaceutical client WellBrexa about the dangers of opioids — episode 16, “The Johnson Case,” wraps with flashbacks showing how Olympia figured out Matty was up to something.
“I was like, ‘Oh, the tables have turned on Miss Matlock, honey!'” Marshall says, laughing, during the conversation with Bates. “That was really fun for me. I knew that was going to be a new tactic for me right after that… new tactic, new body language, new [facial] expressions, zip it up more. And so that was really fun for me.”
What wasn’t so fun, though, was what came next, in episode 17, when Olympia locked Matty in a secluded office, forcing her to reveal every lie she’s told.
“Filming it, no joke, it felt like I was going in the ring with Tyson,” Marshall recalled. “When Kathy would go out her door, I would go out my door. We didn’t rehearse… There’s no other actors there to pull focus or distract you. And I knew for the character that I am going in here to confront a stranger, and so while I’m in here getting to know a new version of her, I’m also processing, where did her accent go? Her body language started to change. And also seeing her emotions, her vulnerability to win me over and not knowing or even ability to determine if that’s real. It’s just such a hard position to be in.”
“Skye and I clicked really early on during the season,” Bates says, “and we don’t talk about what we’re going to do… What’s been such a gift is to find that partner that you wish for [but] you don’t always get — and sometimes it’s been years since you’ve had that. I guess it’s like Matty says, ‘I never expected to find you.’ I certainly never expected to find Skye. So when we were in the scene together, there’s just so much trust that the scenes happen to us, and it’s exhilarating.”
And there’s more of that to come; CBS announced it renewed the series just a month after its September. 22 debut. While Matty’s true identity might have been a shock to Olympia, the fact that her soon-to-be ex-husband, Julian (Jason Ritter), also a junior partner at the firm, played a part in covering up evidence of WellBrexa’s knowledge about its painkiller really does a number on her. Despite the lies, Marshall thinks Olympia and Matty’s reconciliation is inevitable.
“They’re aligned on solving this mystery. Julian is just the string of the sweater, and I believe that together they may attempt to unravel it,” Marshall muses. “But the longer I sit with it, I’m just like, there’s no way that I’m going to let the father of my children take full responsibility for this. Who’s the dictator, and then who dictated him or her? That’s where my brain goes immediately. There’s no way I’m letting this all fall on him.”
As for how long Matlock and Olympia will be solving cases and representing clients, Bates, who’s also an executive producer on the series, says she’s “heard five,” for how many seasons Urman has planned. “Although that might just be my imagination that’s how long I’m going to last,” Bates, 76, jokes. “By then, I’ll be 82 with a sequined walker coming in there to work.”
One thing’s for sure: Bates is savoring every bit of the show’s success.
“I haven’t had this experience ever before in my career, not in 50 years,” she says, beaming. “I feel like I’m a little kid again. I just feel like this is what I’ve been working for, I’m ready for. But I just didn’t know that Heaven was like this. And it’s every bit of it.”
Listen to Bates and Marshall’s full interview on The Awardist below, where they also discuss revealing the show’s season 2 renewal to Marshall on her birthday while they were in Times Square, that episode where Matty gets high on a CBD gummy — and the last time Bates herself had one — and more.
