From courtroom to karaoke, ‘Matlock' Season 2 shakes things up: ‘Anything's up for grabs at this point'
'I want her singing karaoke this year!' the hit series' executive producer and showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman told Gold Derby at an FYC event at the Directors Guild Theater. It was an unexpected nod to star Kathy Bates' wide-ranging talents — Bates is also an accomplished singer.
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'I think it would be fun,' chuckled Bates, considering the idea. 'I think as far as Jennie's concerned, anything's up for grabs at this point.'
Urman, Bates, and the rest of the cast and creative team gathered to celebrate the success of CBS' thoroughly reimagined legal drama, based on the popular Andy Griffith series from the '80s and '90s. A rare blockbuster on broadcast TV in the streaming era, the show is already gearing up for a second season, with the creators teasing what's to come.
Michael Yarish/CBS
'We're going to see Matty now get more blindsided about things that she didn't realize,' Bates hinted. 'She's gotten invested in these people. Now, she's being taken along for the ride. These are things that she hasn't prepared for, so I think that's what's going to be exciting about the second season.'
'Matty, in this second season, is not in control the way that she was — in the first season she was the puppet master,' Urman revealed of the series which also stars Skye P. Marshall and Jason Ritter. 'And so what happens to a character like that when suddenly they're out of control? And that's going to be really interesting to watch.'
Creating emotional tension and moral dilemmas is part of the thrill for Urman and the writers. 'It's really exciting to paint characters into a corner and then figure out smart ways that they escape from it, and how their relationships continue to build and grow in moments of extreme tension,' she said. 'I'm just excited to put Matty into different positions and situations and watch her charm or trick her way out of them.'
Urman shared that she's already deeply immersed in planning for the second season — even before production has resumed.
'We do such a long, detailed season break before we come in, then I pitch to the studio and network,' she explained. 'It's about 40 pages. It takes me over an hour to tell them the story of the season, and it's every character and it's got a lot of twists and it's got a lot of layers and it's all ready, so we have a really meaty, meaty spine. And then we just keep layering on top of that so that we can make them as complex, and yet you can follow them. That's what we want. We want emotional complexity, but we want you to be able to follow the thought.'
'Jennie's got a mind like a Rubik's Cube,' marveled Bates. 'I still can't believe any of this. I never expected this to happen at the end of my career, or something this wonderful that I could dig into and really love doing, and love talking about, and get so excited about the fact that everybody loves it. … I'm living the dream.'
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