‘Matlock’ Star Explains Those Major Flashbacks & Matty’s Big Career Move
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Matlock Season 1 Episode 6, “Sixteen Steps.”]
Skye P. Marshall‘s Olympia is a champion of the marginalized in CBS‘ Matlock. Even when a case takes many years and several attempts to win justice for her clients, she’s always working towards that goal. Episode 6 of the already-renewed procedural’s first season was a major milestone for Marshall’s character both in the courtroom and out, as flashbacks revealed the case and personal circumstances that put so much stress on Olympia and Julian’s (Jason Ritter) marriage, she asked for a divorce.
Things are much better between the couple in the present timeline, and in fact they look primed for a possible reunion. But the mystery about who buried those opioid documents is still looming. Showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman previously said there’s no twist with Matty’s (Kathy Bates) suspects; either Julian Sr. (Beau Bridges), Julian Jr., or Olympia is guilty. Whenever the other shoe drops on this mystery, it could create more turmoil between the currently amicable exes.
Here, Marshall breaks down the emotional episode that addressed how race impacts Olympia and Julian’s relationship and how they raise their children, as well as Olympia’s growing trust in Matty and more.
There is so much Olympia and Julian in this episode. How do you and Jason build that rapport that Olympia and Julian have?
Skye P. Marshall: I had to do a chemistry read audition for the Julian character. I auditioned with five actors, and Jason and I had the most chemistry. No matter what curve ball I would throw to Jason that was not in the script, he just took it and ran with it. He is such a brilliant actor, whether it’s drama or comedy, and I can’t wait for them to really let his wings fly comedically because he’s just a genius.
Our chemistry was from the very beginning, and when we did the pilot together, we did not know that the scenes that we had shot that had some arguments in it were going to get cut. We had some fight scenes, and that’s where we really had to dig deep because we didn’t know each other personally, but the audience and the pilot, they’re being dropped into the middle of this messy divorce. And so we were invited to just be vulnerable very early on with each other. The creative team decided that it was too early to have that kind of fight in the pilot and so it was removed but saved for later. Later is Episode 6.
In Episode 6, we finally answer a lot of questions that fans have had since the second that they saw that we were getting divorced in the pilot and the four episodes after the pilot.
What scene was it that was meant for the pilot?
It wasn’t specifically a scene, because there was no scene pulled from the pilot. But there was a scene that was completely taken out of the pilot, and it was more of the energy. It was more of the stakes of our arguments. It was just too soon to see us go toe to toe like that. And in the pilot, it was when Julian’s in Olympia’s office before Elijah [Eme Ikwuakor] and the team walk in and interrupt. That actually was a longer argument before it gets interrupted. That was cut short because that was just not the focal point for the pilot. And we didn’t want anyone to dislike me or Julian based off of that fight.
I don’t know all the reasons why creative teams choose to keep certain scenes or not, but I do know that they made the right decision once I read the script for Episode 6, because Episode 6 just shows the layers of the past two years that led to the divorce.
Sonja Flemming / CBS
Two years ago, Olympia was at the beginning of wanting to change the direction of her fight and who she was fighting for. She was done with corporate litigation, she was done with big pharma. She wanted to be more intentional on the clients that she took on. And it was the clients which you have seen from Episode 1 to 5. They cannot technically afford Olympia, but Olympia will take them on in return for a huge payout through a class action. So Senior can get the big payout, but Olympia has done good work by helping someone, whether they were from her community or some connection to her culture, or someone who just needs the type of gumption, fight, talent, and intellect that Olympia can bring.
She looks beyond the socialites and the wealthy, and she digs deep in being more specific about who she represents. That’s the beginning of that vision is in Episode 6, where she decides that that’s the direction she wants pursue. Julian’s not on board. He’s not inspiring her or motivating her at all, doesn’t think Senior would even agree to it. And Olympia always knows that she has a different relationship with Senior than Julian. And that triggers Julian constantly. It’s so much history that has happened prior to Episode 6 that leads to why Julian and Olympia will then have to get divorced.
It seems that Junior doesn’t see the importance of certain things, like how their kids are dressed for school, because he’s thinking from the perspective of a privileged white man. He’s like, this isn’t that important. And of course, it’s different for Olympia.
Absolutely. Very different. Olympia was not raised with a silver spoon in her mouth. She doesn’t know what nepotism is. Her father was a marine living off of veteran benefits before he passed. She does not expect or have that sense of entitlement. She comes up with a plan. She is 10 steps ahead before she even asks for permission. She battle tests everything. She’s very calculated. And those are gifts that Julian has never had to seek.
There’s a piece of this episode as well that focuses on the feelings of Black women — Black mothers specifically — and how the world reacts to those feelings. You can see that Julian is upset that Olympia is upset in that flashback scene in the factory. Can you share what depicting a storyline like this on network TV means for you? It’s powerful to watch.
It’s very powerful for me to deliver. Because it’s this invisible responsibility that not just Black women, but mothers in general, mothers are the ones that have to remember when the kid’s recital is and what she needs for that recital and the field trip and what she needs in order to go on the field trip and the next doctor’s appointment, and all these things that we hold in our minds throughout the day on top of all of the other responsibilities that we have to do for ourself or our husband or our clients. A lot of what I have been told about fathers, fathers don’t hold that calendar of events and the tasks involved with that calendar in their minds throughout the day. And so while it may seem small to Julian about the kids wearing pajamas to school or not having their hair done properly, it means everything to Olympia because that is how she was raised.
Me as an individual, that’s exactly how I was raised as well. I was raised by a Black woman who was born in 1944. In 1961 in Virginia [where Marshall grew up], it was illegal to marry somebody who was white as a Black person. As long as I can remember, if as a Black child you wake up, if your hair looks messy, it’s not like you can just throw it in a ponytail, right? If your child’s hair is done, it’s clean and it’s done to perfection, then when she leaves that house, the people in the street will know that that child is looked after and might be less likely to snatch that child off the street. Because her clothes are clean and her hair is done, that means that she’s looked after. That means that someone will come looking for this child. This is not a child who is neglected or who is forgotten. So do not follow this child.
This is not a conversation that I ever had with Jennie [Snyder Urman], but Jennie has this superpower of really understanding other cultures that are not her own. I mean, she made a stunning telenovela series, Jane the Virgin, and won a Golden Globe. She took The CW to the Golden Globes. I was shocked in the most beautiful way when I realized a Jewish woman wrote this fabulous series because she surrounded herself with a team of phenomenal writers, and she also inserts herself in the community and the culture and her circle of friends also mirror it. Jennie understood that it’s not enough to just make the lawyer Black. You have to be able to write for a Black woman who happens to be a lawyer.
When I saw that scene in Episode 6 about what the children were wearing and their hair and just their upkeep and how important it is for Olympia, and how it was something that Julian’s like, “it’s not a big deal,” I never had a conversation with Jennie about that. It was just one of those unspoken things where I’m so happy that I get to say her words. I’m so happy that I get to be a part of her series and her world because I don’t have to be marveled when she understands a lot of the little winks at the Black culture that is necessary when you have a Black lead and you have a large population of Black audience watching. They see and they understand these little moments that might go over other people’s heads. And I’m so happy that you caught that.
I’m really glad that you get to have that experience on the show and that it’s going to continue. Getting renewed just two episodes in is just fabulous.
It’s so fabulous, right? [If] you go to my Instagram page and you go to when Kathy and I went down to Times Square to see her megatron billboard and just swipe to the end, you’ll see a photo of Kathy crying in my arms. My chin is practically resting on the top of her head, and I’m crying too.
That photo is from all of the hard work that not just that our entire crew and cast delivered for Season 1, but Kathy and I having to learn all of that dialogue, having to be so vulnerable, having to dig really deep with each other, and having to really lean on each other to carry the mega weight of the dialogue. She and I have so much more in common than we do not, and so do the characters, Olympia and Madeline Matlock, which you will see evolve throughout this season. And in Episode 6, you get to see a moment of emotional vulnerability where they connect on Madeline’s loss of a child and Olympia’s fear of losing a child.
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I really love you and Kathy together in this. I think Olympia and Matty are really the central love story of the show.
Oh, you said it. You’re the first one to say it. That’s exactly what Kathy and I realized. By the time we were done filming Season 1, we realized that we were the love story of the season.
But there’s also this mystery that’s on the horizon with the hidden documents. Olympia doesn’t realize that she almost caught Matty red-handed in this episode in that balcony scene. Just how close is Olympia to figuring something out? Is she suspecting anything right now?
No, not yet. She can take the temperature of Madeline Matlock now, so she knows when something is off, but she doesn’t actually know what it is yet. Because while they’re no longer just colleagues and they’re becoming friends, she still doesn’t know a lot about Matlock’s world outside of Jacobson Moore. She’s hoping it will be offered up without having to pry. But if she does find an opportunity, she will use it. In Episode 6, when she’s like, who found you? That’s an opportunity because she wants to just learn about Madeline Matlock, but there’s no suspecting that anything is suspicious about her. She wants to help her as a friend. So if someone’s looking for you, what do I need to do? She’s becoming a true friend and becoming the mama bear.
Could Matty pop Olympia and Julian’s flirtatious exes bubble? Especially since Matty will be working more closely with Julian now.
Madeline working with Julian, that just gives her more of an advantage because she doesn’t know much about him. She has me figured out. She’s still learning about Senior, but she has a pretty good idea about where Senior was when the documents were taken. But she knows nothing about Julian really, except what she’s learned through me and my conflicts with Julian. And so after Episode 6, you start to see the beginning of a relationship being created solely between Madeline and Julian, without me consistently being in the middle. Does it last long? We’ll see.
What does the landscape look like now that Matty has switched teams? Will we see less of Olympia, Sarah [Leah Lewis], and Billy [David Del Rio]?
In Episode 7, you’ll definitely see what the Madeline-Julian world looks like at the beginning as she moves to big pharma. But just like you witnessed in Episode 1, when Julian’s about to get into an argument with Olympia and Elijah and the team walk in and interrupt, Julian sat down and was like, OK, let’s roll up our sleeves and figure this out.
There is no Julian without Olympia, and there’s no Olympia without Julian because they came up together within Jacobson Moore, and they trust each other whether they get along or not. They trust each other as skilled attorneys. And so you will not see less, but you will see that Madeline Matlock has to really be careful on what she wishes, because big pharma is not to be played with.
Matlock, Thursdays, 9/8c, CBS
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