MATLOCK – Season 1 Key art | ©2024 CBS

CBS’s freshman series MATLOCK proved so popular on its debut that it was picked up for a second season after it had been on the air for only two weeks. Kathy Bates stars as Madeline “Matty” Matlock, an older attorney coming out of retirement for financial reasons, who winds up assisting junior partner Olympia Lawrence (Skye P. Marshall) at prestigious law firm Jacobson Moore.

Except Matty is really wealthy, experienced attorney Madeline Kingston. After losing their daughter to an opioid overdose, Matty and her husband Edwin have been raising their young grandson Alfie (Aaron D. Harris). Jacobson Moore covered up the opioid epidemic on behalf of its big pharma client, drug company Welbrexa. Matty wants to find out whoever at the law firm was personally responsible for the cover-up, so she can publicly shame them and possibly even get them in jail. The problem is, Matty starts to bond with Olympia – and Olympia may be the culprit.

The original MATLOCK ran for nine seasons, 1986-1995, starring Andy Griffith as wealthy, brilliant attorney Ben Matlock, who defends his clients by finding the real guilty party.

The new MATLOCK is created by Jennie Snyder Urman, who also serves as showrunner. The series runs Thursday nights, then streams on Paramount Plus.

Eric Christian Olsen is one of MATLOCK’s executive producers, alongside Urman and others. Olsen has enjoyed a long, positive relationship with CBS as one of the stars of the network’s 13-season hit NCIS: LOS ANGELES.

When the Television Critics Association press tour has a Q&A session for MATLOCK, Olsen participates, then makes himself available for a one-on-one follow-up conversation. This interview combines that discussion with Olsen’s comments on the panel.

While Olsen has a plethora of acting credits, he has turned his focus to producing in recent years as CEO of Cloud Nine Productions.

“I started a production pod about seven years ago,” Olsen explains. “We had a show, WOKE, that ran on Hulu for two seasons, but the white whale of development has always been broadcast television. And so, we’ve been diligently selling TV shows for the past six years.”

This effort, Olsen continues, “has been covered so well by HOLLYWOOD REPORTER and DEADLINE, [which have written] about the shows that we set up in development.”

The long working relationship with CBS was an asset. “I’ve had so many experiences working for CBS for thirteen years, and I did think that this was an incredible opportunity and platform to find stories that I was passionate about, and then help build them from the ground up. The ability to pivot and help tell stories that I’m so proud of from a producing standpoint and solving complex problems with communication and grace and empathy [is] a wonderful opportunity that I was given from our studio partners and the network.”

Executive Producer Eric Christian Olsen at the 2024 TCA CBS Press Tour for MATLOCK | ©2024 CBS

But the magic piece of intellectual property turned out to be MATLOCK. Olsen recalls “I was working with the studio, it was the height of the pandemic, it was all the uncertainty and chaos that was existing in the world. And I remember looking through a list of IP [intellectual property] and seeing MATLOCK.

“I had that sense memory overload of what it felt like to watch that show in my grandparents’ house with shag carpeting in Rockford, Illinois, and just remembering how good that show felt, to have your primary hero in search of truth and justice, combined with wanting to make that type of television.

“There were a lot of discussions about what a new MATLOCK, a reimagination, would look like, whether that’s going to be the granddaughter [of the original Griffith character] who’s twenty-seven or the son who’s forty-five. The philosophy of getting somebody who’s lived and loved and lost to take you by the hand on this journey for justice, I think, is a beautiful echo of the sentiment of that original show.”

Ultimately, in the new MATLOCK, as conceived by Urman, Matty isn’t really a Matlock at all – in fact, the characters refer to the original MATLOCK as a TV series. How did Olsen and the other producers come to bring Urman onto the project?

“I begged her,” Olsen declares. “She became available, and I and the staff and the studio were like, ‘Please take a look at this.’ Philosophically, we knew we wanted to make it with a seventy-year-old woman [as Matlock] and Jennie executed the best version.”

Urman came up with a unique take on the main character and her trajectory, Olsen observes. “I remember her pitching that to me, I was in the driveway of her house in Idaho, and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ Full existential crisis. ‘I have to reimagine how we’re doing development, because this is the smartest thing I’ve ever heard.’ And then she pitched it to the studio, and they were like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is the smartest thing we’ve ever heard!’

“So, it wasn’t just me, it was across the board, that meta use of the IP to tell the audience what’s happening with the characters inside the story, and then, even though you’ve been told throughout the whole thing you’ll have that card flip at the end, you do it to the audience as well. Jennie’s amazing.”

Having a septuagenarian lead, when that character is played by Bates, turned out not to be an issue. “I think this is the best version of the execution of that philosophy, and [the network and studio] were full champions of not making this the thirty-five-year-old granddaughter. This is the seventy-year-old Kathy Bates on the head of a poster. That’s something to be celebrated and something I think that we are all very proud of.

“I was talking with Skye yesterday about a manifest board, this idea of putting hopes and dreams and the best version of something up on a board. I realized when talking to Skye that if I would have done a manifest board for what MATLOCK would look like, it would never have done justice to what we have in reality with Jennie and the writers and the crew and the cast that we have and the support from the network.”

While each episode has a legal procedural that has to be solved, two big arc questions hanging over first season are whether Matty will find out who helped Welbrexa hide the opioid facts, and whether anyone at Jacobson Moore will discover Matty’s deception.

Olsen feels these plot aspects are Urman’s, not his, to discuss. “I know the answer to it, but that’s her story to tell. But there’s more than [those revelations]. There are so many card flips, and the longevity of the show I think is going to be based on not only the serialized elements, but also, the unconventional [non-romantic] love story of Kathy and Skye as Matty and Olympia. That [relationship is] brought up in really interesting ways in the hands of Jennie Snyder Urman, executed by two of the best actors on TV. So, yeah, more of that to come.”

Another key relationship for Matty is obviously the one with her husband, retired professor Edwin, played by Sam Anderson. Whose idea was it to cast Anderson opposite Bates?

“All of ours,” Olsen says. “He’s a superstar. He’s so talented, he’s extraordinary. There was a table read that we did on Thursday, and I was in tears. You have to find someone that carries that gravitas opposite Kathy to do justice to those scenes. He does it in spades. And his entry points to those conversations [between Edwin and Matty] are a kind of love that’s only solidified and earned through a relationship of forty-odd years. And they have it. They’re unbelievable together.”

And what would Olsen most like people to know about Season 1 of MATLOCK?

Thursday nights, nine o’clock, after GHOSTS. I think it’s multi-generational. It was one of the highest-testing pilots in ten years. I’m excited for people to see it. And I also think you’re going to find, in the search of identity and purpose and self-worth, the struggle of Matty at home versus Matty being truly valued at Jacobson Moore, at the law firm. I think that drives so much of the story moving forward, too, is that version of herself is really compelling, and how does she give that up?”

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Article: Exclusive Interview: MATLOCK: Executive producer Eric Christian Olsen on the first season of the CBS procedural – Exclusive Interview

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