19-05-2025
‘Matlock' creator drops juicy Season 2 spoilers: Twists, turns, and working with Kathy Bates
"I am thrilled, grateful, happy ... and crippled with anxiety," says Matlock creator Jennie Snyder Urman. Her CBS drama is the No. 1 new show on television — and with success comes pressure. "I want to keep giving these amazing actors good work. I want it to continue to do well."
In Matlock, Kathy Bates plays Madeline "Matty" Matlock, a widowed lawyer returning to the workforce after her late husband's gambling debts leave her in financial ruin — or so it seems. As revealed in the pilot, none of that is true. She's actually Madeline Kingston, a wealthy, happily married grandmother grieving the loss of her daughter to an opioid overdose. Now, she's on a quest for answers and justice within the law firm she deems responsible.
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"When you say her name, people just have a reaction," Synder Urman says of the show's star. "I love Kathy Bates. It comes with just a real respect for all the characters that she's played and all the ways that she's transformed herself. I've never seen anything like it. From the beginning, I would say her name and people would be like, 'Oh wow.' And then I got to work with her. You realize she phones nothing in. Every moment is layered and detailed and thought about. She's so fun to work with and she's so giving as an actor. It's just really beyond my dreams. I feel so lucky every day."
Snyder Urman recently spoke to Gold Derby about the success of Matlock, the debut season's biggest twists, and what fans can expect to see in Season 2. Read our Q&A below.
SEE 'Matlock's' Skye P. Marshall on manifesting her dream job: 'You have to be delusional to succeed in this industry'
Gold Derby: Bates won a Critics Choice Award and now she's a front-runner for the Emmy. What does that say about the idea that a 76-year-old can be the biggest star on TV?
Jennie Snyder Urman: That's the biggest gift of the show. If you talked to Kathy, I don't think she would say she could do this part however many years ago. This is a part that's come to her now, and she always talks about all the tools that she's using and all of the ways in which she's looking back through her life to mine for all these different moments. It's just so awesome that she responded to this as a platform to show us how vital and incredible she is at the age of 76. I want to be that excellent at my job at that age.
I think we have so many older women that are so excellent and are so underused. Part of it is because we're just used to always seeing older men in positions of authority and they're our presidents and they're regal. We look to them for wisdom. We just haven't had those models for women — and I just want more of it.
In Episode 17, titled "I Was That, Too," Olympia (Skye P. Marshall) locks Matty in a room and interrogates her about the lies she's told. What was it like to shoot that pivotal episode?
Originally, when I was looking at our whole season and looking at the budget that we had, I was like, "We are going to need to make some money back because budgets are tight and I have these two monster actors."
I'd originally conceived it because I thought it would be a great episode to make up some money, honestly, and it would take place in this one room. I couldn't do that on any other show. I could do that on this show because of these two actors and how compelling they were together. It was in our head initially as like, oh, that'll be help on the budget. The more I thought about that episode, it was the episode that we were just waiting to write, waiting to write, waiting to write. We were going to be answering so many questions for the audience, so many questions for Olympia, and then all of a sudden we were going to change the point of view and really hold the audience's feet to the fire and say, "This woman that you've been really rooting for this whole time has been hurting this other woman." You're going to see it now and you're going to feel it. It's going to change the way that you feel about her. And that was exciting.
The season ends with Alfie's (Aaron D. Harris) potential biological father arriving at Matty's door. Will he be a pivotal character in Season 2?
The first thing they're going to do is obviously a DNA test, but the door has been opened to looking for the father and whether it's him or someone else. Alfie's father is going to play a role in the second season. I think what's really interesting as we go into our second season is — we have this character who we built the whole show around as a person who was always in control, she was the puppeteer — and now we have Olympia who knows about her scheme, so she does not have all the power anymore.
Now she has this other person who's coming into her home life too — that's an out of control element. So what's exciting to me about the second season is that you have this character who we've seen operate when she had all the cards in front of her. Suddenly, she can't be in control of everything. What is that like for this character under that kind of pressure? Alfie is Matty's whole entire world and they have been in lockstep the whole time. So what happens when they're not? That's another thing that she has not experienced yet. Whoever the father is is going to open an avenue into Ellie, to Matty's daughter. We had a lot of the pain of what it was like living with an addict. That is something that we're going to continue to investigate, but we're also going to see some of the joy of what their relationship was like — Ellie and her mom — and I think that's going to give us more layers and more colors.
Matty also loves being back in the workforce. Will this take a toll on her marriage to Edwin (Sam Anderson)?
Matty really loves what she does and she feels vital. She feels seen — she feels like she's helping people. She also is doing litigation, which she never did in her career. So suddenly at 76, her world is opening up when she was expecting it to be starting to close in a little bit. And that's so exciting and revitalizing for her.
She wants to keep working as a lawyer and they're going to have to negotiate that. And what I'm interested in — it probably is a spoiler — what happens when you want different things after 50 years? How do you negotiate? I think we have a line coming up in the next season that's like, "You're going to what? Go to the pickleball courts and find another lady and she's going to massage that spot on your shoulder? ... We're in it. You're married to me. I want to work. You don't want me to work. So now we have to figure out how much I'm going to work." They start negotiating on details and other things that he wants that are surprising as a result. That forces our story into new areas. Conflicts don't necessarily have to stop us in our tracks, but they can lead us to really new, fresh, dramatic territory if we follow them honestly.
We found out Julian (Jason Ritter) was the one holding the secrets Matty was looking for. Now Olympia is in a predicament — do I try to protect my kids from their father's mistake or am I going to be honest with Matty? How will this transpire in Season 2?
It was challenging to figure out what Olympia was going to do and how it was going to create drama for not just that episode, but for a season. She's in a real pressure cooker, Olympia. And now, whereas we came into the first season with Matty having a secret, Olympia has a secret and what she does with it will be — you'll find out in the first episode back.
Did you know it was going to be Julian hiding the evidence the whole time?
We debated Julian in the writer's room quite a bit. Once we came to him, we stayed there. But we did debate it quite a bit. We do a really long, long, long detailed series pitch that's like a 40-page document. It takes the studio and network through every episode and what's going to happen. We stay pretty close to it.
I'm starting to think Senior (Beau Bridges) could be worse than we imagine. Is there going to be more exploration of that father-son relationship?
Yes. More of the father-son dynamic. You're going to meet Senior's third ex-wife, which is the only woman he married for brains. He will never do that again. You will get to know the power structure of Jacobson Moore a little bit more — the other power players in the law firm. We're going to be defining that a little bit more specifically and you will learn more about Senior.
SEE Kathy Bates wants Dolly Parton to join Season 2 cast of 'Matlock' — and she has the perfect role for the iconic performer
You also teased a continuation of the rivalry between Sarah (Leah Lewis) and Simone (Andrea Londo).
Simone is a really competitive person. Simone's way of getting under Sarah's skin is to pretend like she's not competitive while being really competitive. So that's their backstory — and they just f---ing hated each other in law school. You are going to see what comes of that. There will be a consequence.
Billy (David Del Rio) learned his ex-girlfriend is pregnant in the season finale. What's next for him?
Billy is a real people pleaser and now this person who he thought he finally got over has come back and said she's pregnant. Is she going to keep the baby? Is she not? What is he going to do about it? It just throws his life into a good kind of chaos. At the end of the season, I really have [Billy and Sarah] learn and grow and then threaten it all.
Kathy said she would love for Dolly Parton to guest star as Cindy Shapiro. Has the request been sent out to Dolly?
That is the deepest dream. Kathy knew that it was my deepest dream, too. But no, we're too early. I'm still in pre-production.
Season 2 of Matlock starts filming in July. Season 1 is currently streaming on Paramount+.
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