SPOILER ALERT! This story contains details about the premiere episode of Matlock on CBS.
Viewers expecting a simple gender-swapped version of the classic TV show starring Andy Griffith were treated with an unexpected twist at the end of the episode.
Instead of seeing the sweet little old Madeline “Matty” Matlock go home to her modest house and cat, we find out that this brilliant, 60-something lawyer is actually on a secret mission to bust up the law firm that could have prevented opioids from killing so many people (like her daughter, whose son she is now raising with her husband.)
Matty’s targets are Olympia (Skye P. Marshall), a senior attorney and key rainmaker with a thirst for justice; Olympia’s ex-husband/attorney Julian (Jason Ritter), and his father Julian Sr. (Beau Bridges), who heads the firm that Matty wants to destroy.
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Here, creator and showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman explains why she decided to turn the remake on its head, and what we can expect by the end of the drama’s first season on CBS.
DEADLINE So the pilot goes from, ‘oh this is a story about a sweet older lady going back to work to a holy sh*! this comes with a hardcore twist. Was that all a part of your original pitch? How did you get there?
JENNIE SNYDER URMAN It was part of the original pitch. When I was thinking about what I would do if I were to adapt this title, I was like, what would be different? Of course, I was going to start with a female protagonist, but I didn’t want to just do a gender swapped version that wasn’t interesting. So I started to think that maybe she is using the name Matlock. I gave myself sort of a challenge. I can continue to tell the audience they’re underestimating her but then they’re fooled at the end. I knew I wanted her to have a spine of steel throughout the show, that it had real stakes, that there was something real and deep we could explore in terms of grief and loss and our responsibility to each other, the responsibility of the legal profession in terms of what is your responsibility to public health versus your job as a lawyer to not do something that would hurt your client. I had read an article about a law firm that was sanctioned for hiding documents in the opioid crisis, and that stayed with me for a long time. I had read all of those books before Dopesick, and I remember I tried to get the rights early on, so that was all in my head at the same time. You never know what the soup of is going to be like, how the synapses are going to connect in your brain. Why would a woman like that want to go back into the law firm? What could be deep and meaningful enough? Then the story unfolded. So I pitched it, from beginning to end.
DEADLINE So the sweet little lady that we see at the beginning … are we going to find out, away from the law firm, that she’s far from that?
URMAN In the pilot, you really have to feel like you’re enjoying a fish-out-of-water comedy. And then all of a sudden, the ending comes and you’re surprised. Starting with episode two, you’re on the inside with her. So you get the privilege of knowing she’s on her secret mission. She’s a spy, basically. Is she going to get caught? Is she not going to get caught? We start to expand the home life, and you start to learn more about who Madeline Kingston is. You start to learn more about her family, about her marriage, about her grandson, about her daughter. You’ll meet her daughter eventually in flashbacks and sort of go to that core, that moment when Matty decided that she has this plan. Is she going to get caught and excited when she outsmart someone, or worried when she doesn’t outsmart someone?
DEADLINE The hardcore part is definitely not comedy.
URBAN No. I like a range of tones in one piece. We can laugh, and then we can go to something much more serious, as long as we take the character seriously and her circumstances seriously and are honest about her emotional life.
DEADLINE So will we see Matty at home addressing how she hates having to play the nice little old lady at work?
URBAN Well, at the end of the pilot, she’s like, ‘these f–king butterscotch candies.’ She’s not a fan, but they sell little lady to her. Madeline Kingston is a much more direct, much more driven, and a harder character than Matty Matlock. We do get into the differences of who she is, where the Matty Matlock persona came from. You’ll learn about that. We really try to keep revealing things as the show goes on.
DEADLINE So can I assume there will be the serialized portion of the season, but each episode will also have B and C stories about cases she’s working on?
URBAN There will be big, robust legal case that Matty will be working on episodically. So that’s really the story. Then we have the spy, the undercover agent that always runs through, and is the serialized aspect. The relationships are the serialized aspects, and the central love story, to me, is the relationship with Olympia and Matty — and how they come together and how they come apart. When Matty starts this mission, people are sort of players on a chessboard. As she gets deeper in, they’re real people with real feelings. She becomes attached emotionally, and all the reasons that being undercover is challenging for her, so that becomes a big part of the storytelling, as well.
DEADLINE Can you address the challenges of depicting an older woman in the workplace and making sure the language doesn’t sound ageist?
URMAN I’ve gone according to gut and trying to play into people’s expectations before subverting them. A lot of times, we say things so that other people can’t hurt us. There’s a little bit of that. Matty uses that. She uses the fact that people are going to underestimate her. People are going to think she’s a nice, sweet little lady who doesn’t have much of an agenda besides, like, paying her bills. And she’s going to run with that. It’s sort of like, underestimate her, if you dare. We’ve had fun with the jokes because the humor is also a big part of the show, and I hope that we hit the balance where we can say things and sort of have fun with it, but also what we are ultimately doing is paying homage to what an older woman can do and is capable of. And that, to me, is really thrilling.
DEADLINE How long do you want to keep the secret? Will you resolve it by the end of the season?
URBAN Matty does not want to get exposed, I’ll say that. I wanted the mystery that we’re setting out with to be 100% resolved by the end of the season. It will leave us with new problems.
DEADLINE How has it been working with Kathy Bates?
URBAN It’s just a dream come true to be able to witness her process and the depth to which she goes into the scripts. It’s really an honor to work with her and to have her apply her rigor to the words that the writers and I have put together. It’s inspiring. With such a complicated character, you need someone masterful at the helm, because a lot of times she’s telling the audience one thing, but I need her eyes to tells other things to the audience.
An encore of the Matlock pilot will air October 10, and then episode 2 airs during CBS’ official premiere week on October 17. Matlock will also be available on Paramount+.
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