[This story contains spoilers from the April 3 episode of Matlock, “The Johnson Case.”]
Nothing in the pilot that launched the CBS hit show Matlock starring Oscar winner Kathy Bates hinted that the friendship between cunning and wily 76-year-old Madeline “Matty” Matlock, a lawyer with a lot of fight still left in her tank, and the partner-tracked, soon-to-be divorcee mother of young twins Olympia Lawrence would become one of the most compelling elements of the show. But that’s exactly where things are as Matlock prepares to wrap its first season. Now, the audience stake in that relationship hit like a boulder as Olympia confronted Matty at the end of the third to last episode.
“So, who the hell are you, Madeline Matlock?” Olympia (Skye P. Marshall) grilled, as Matty stepped off the bus she regularly takes from cushy Jacobson Moore before meeting her driver and sinking into the back of a limo on her way to her mansion — not a cramped apartment in Queens — where she is Madeline Kingston. Is the jig really up?
In a show where an older woman is posing as a broke lawyer forced to work in her societally deemed retirement years to support herself and her motherless grandson, but is really digging for the evidence she needs to punish the Big Pharma company that could have pulled the opioids that killed her daughter off the market, while also winning some of the most impossible cases in highly unpredictable ways, why do we care if Matty and Olympia are friends? We just do.
When The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Syke P. Marshall to discuss Olympia and her relationship with Matty, the Chicago native and military veteran, who enjoyed her first series regular role on the short-lived CBS medical drama Good Sam, had some interesting things to say, especially about the most recent developments.
Marshall is not ashamed to share that she jumped at the chance to work with Bates. Despite still not having an agent, Marshall had her managers secure her a script and even cut the reel for her self-tape herself. With the tenacity she learned in the military and an abiding confidence in her craft, she beat out other actresses to score what she calls the role of her lifetime.
From the beginning, she knew this show couldn’t miss. “I saw Kathy Bates. She truly is undeniable. She can do no wrong, and she has had such a loyal fanbase for decades,” says Marshall. “If you can score someone with the reputation, the repertoire and craftsmanship as Kathy, and as a bonus, you partner with a mastermind of a writer like Jennie Snyder Urman, and the producing magic that Eric [Christian] Olsen and his team put together with his deal at CBS [and Paramount], and then surround Kathy with an eclectic group of actors like Jason Ritter [Julian], myself, David Del Rio [Billy], Leah Lewis [Sarah], Beau Bridges [Senior] and Eme Ikwuakor [Elijiah], we knew that we had something extremely special from shooting the pilot, and the studio executives knew as well.”
Marshall is proud of the impact the show has made in its very first season. “We got people back on the couch watching live television with their family and friends,” she beams of the broadcast hit. “When I walk through the streets of New York, I can’t count how many times people are like ‘So who did it? Was it you or Julian?’”
While she’s not telling what happens in the end, she is dishing a lot of insight into Olympia and her dynamic with Matty and what’s next for Matlock as a show (already renewed for season two), below.
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Who is Olympia in your eyes? And what is, or was, her relationship with Matty?
Olympia is very focused. She’s a leader, she’s an advocate. She’s a daughter of a Marine and she understands that in order to be at the top, you have to work your way up through the ranks. You have to learn not just Jacobson Moore, but how to fall in line on Team Olympia. And as you can see, Sarah’s learning and Billy has it locked down. Billy’s character is the mayor of Jacobson Moore, and Matty Matlock walks in and she just gets placed on my team. And while a lot of fans were like, “I don’t like the way Olympia is talking to Matty; she’s so mean to Matlock,” she understands the principle of making your way into Olympia’s heart and trust. So over time, you started to see Matty Matlock find the crack in the castle wall.
What makes her so unique and clever is that she’s unassuming, but she also has such a nurturing way of making you feel safe to be vulnerable, and Olympia does not feel safe and vulnerable in Jacobson Moore, which is why our art director made my office all glass. I imagine [Olympia] always knows she’s being watched or supervised, and with that, my posture was always straight. I’m always going or coming from somewhere, so that’s why you always see that my delivery and the pace is always fast, and the stakes are always high.
Over time, Olympia and Matlock are not just colleagues, but they’re also not yet friends. I think the audience started to soften up on Olympia when they started to see how hard she fights, and that her client is her priority. I love that she’s very intentional on accomplishing her goal of being partner, but she’s also staying true to her number one heartfelt purpose in life, and that’s giving people who are overlooked and don’t have the budget for a high-end firm like Jacobson Moore a chance. She represents those people so that she can do good, but also get paid, and satisfy Jacobson Moore by winning big class action suits. But the amount of money is just to obtain the surface level career goal. Who she is, to her core, that the audience gets to see is somebody who lives on purpose, and somebody who hasn’t forgotten where she comes from, and she reaches back and pulls people up so that they can get the justice that she may not have received.
What’s Olympia’s relationship with Billy and Sarah?
Oh my babies … I refer to Billy as the mayor of Jacobson Moore. He is just so feel-good, do-right, abide by the rules and the law, and is just such a source of leadership. You only see Olympia snap at Billy one time, and it was between Billy and Sarah when she was overwhelmed in the Slammed case and didn’t want to give up. But outside of that, she’s always relied on Billy, and she’s always trusted Billy. Sarah is an overachiever, and she’s getting in her own way. She’s self-sabotaging, and I believe Olympia can also see a lot of her journey in Sarah back when she was a junior attorney. And she can see the potential, but she can’t let Sarah in all the way because Sarah is still a little reckless. So I think that Olympia is learning to trust Sarah with more responsibility, but Sarah has to figure out who she wants to be internally at Jacobson Moore before Olympia can put any trust in her with a client’s life.
Some people are still in disbelief about Olympia busting Matty. Like, is this real? After all, we’ve seen Matty have nightmares about this.
Yeah, it is, but it’s one of those things where we’ve been so focused on Matlock trying to figure out who hid the Wellbrexa documents that we completely forgot that Matlock too could get caught. So I think that’s what throws you. You’re like, “Oh my gosh, I forgot Matlock’s a liar; Matlock’s a con.” You forget because you love her, and you want everyone to be nice to her. You want her goal to get accomplished, and so you completely forget. I thought that it was so brilliant of Jennie Urman and the writing team to allow the audience to get so entrenched in figuring out who hid the documents that they completely forget they’re rooting for a con!
So then how devastating is it for Olympia to realize Matty has been playing her? Where do they go from here?
I think the thread that the audience has seen is different ways that Olympia has been betrayed, especially when it comes to Julian, when it comes to Shae, when it comes to Elijah, even if it was like micro-aggression with Elijah, you will see the ultimate betrayal. And in the office, she has to determine, does she judge Matlock, or does she seek to understand? When you seek to understand, that requires a deeper level of compassion, patience and a willingness to believe that sometimes good people make bad choices. So what you’ll see is Olympia working through that, processing her anger and her frustration and her confusion, and transitioning it seeking to understand the why, and the how.
Will finding out who hid the Wellbrexa file fundamentally change the show?
I feel that finding out who hid the documents is just one layer of a really effed up cake and a disaster that brought upon an opioid epidemic. Who else is responsible? Like, who was the one that sent the marching orders to hide the document? Who’s involved? This is just in my head. They might pivot in season two. Who knows? Jennie has an amazing way of pulling a thread and unraveling a sweater, and you’re just like, “Oh my gosh, what’s happening, what’s next, what’s next?” And I feel that season one is pulling the thread.
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Matlock is just two episodes from wrapping its first season with a two-hour finale on April 17.
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