One of the most amazing things about HBO’s new interpretation of the Perry Mason how different its approach is from the original Raymond Burr series. Other adaptations existed before the premiere of the 1957 TV show, but the long-running procedural drama cemented Perry’s image as a white knight of a defense attorney, ensuring that his innocent clients were ultimately found not guilty.
But this 21st century version of the character, Matthew Rhys like, more complicated. “I think Perry’s position [in the original series] a little bit more linear, like he’s like, ‘I’m the good guy here. I will take care of the bad guys and they will confess to the principle,” said Rhys RESULTS. “I believe we are Perry Mason about the color gray. Masons share the same moral principles about right and wrong. I think he has a simple view of his world and his life — there is right and there is wrong. But it’s the gray in between that makes him so angry sometimes. “
Season 2 follows Perry and her fellow Della Street (Juliet Rylance) and Paul Drake (Chris Chalk) as they fall into a new case that has everything in 1932 Los Angeles in an uproar: The murder of the heir to an oil dynasty, with the main suspects being two young Latinos who men from a local Hooverville.
“I feel like the show this season is definitely about isolated characters, learning how to create and gain mutual trust in the small community they’re in,” Rylance said, “and either succeed or fail and then take what they’re learning and try to expand that to the wider community around them. And that’s felt very much to this day, obviously with the setting of a big case and the corruption in LA and these many political and legal conditions they face.”
Rylance said that coming back for Season 2 “was really exciting, and it felt really necessary after this long pause with COVID and so much turmoil in the world, and everyone feeling so uncertain about where we are, where we’re going, what we. have to do, or even how to interact with each other. I think going on set and starting the season with that framework was rich. It felt like there was a lot there that was mined that felt like a parallel universe of the show, and I think all the themes of this season are very much born out of the time period that we’ve just been in. It feels very raw and very special.”
Chalk agreed, adding that he also felt “a sense of coming home to be with your friends again, knowing that we’re going to be dealing with big topics and themes, but knowing that the people we interacted with were all there. the same team was a cool advantage in the second season.”