SPOILER ALERT: The following interview contains spoilers from “Sixteen Steps,” the Nov. 14 episode of CBS’ “Matlock,” now streaming on Paramount+.
The jig was almost up for Madeline “Matty” Matlock (Kathy Bates) in this week’s episode of the freshman legal drama when someone from her past who knows her by her real name, Madeline Kingston, pushes his way into her present.
In the previous episode, “Claws,” a dating app profile was created for Matty, which she couldn’t prevent, since she’s pretending to be widow Matty Matlock while undercover as a lawyer at the Jacobson Moore Law Firm. The photo on that dating profile is seen by a man named Stanley (Henry LeBlanc), and Matty is not happy about it. This week, we find out that Stanley isn’t romantically interested in Matty, but is a fellow parent with a drug addicted child. He insists on seeing her, bringing back painful memories as well as potentially blowing up Matty’s plan to implicate her employers for withholding evidence that could’ve pulled the opioids that killed her daughter, Ellie, off the market. However, all the pain might be worth it when, in the episode’s final moments, Matty is told she’s being added to the firm’s pharma team.
To help dissect the events in this episode, and where “Matlock’s” many storyline threads are headed, series creator Jennie Snyder Urman talked to Variety.
The show came out of the gate strong, and you already have a second season renewal. Did you see this coming?
No, I feel surprised and excited. Kathy is such an extraordinary person and presence and actor, so I know that’s the reason people are tuning in — she does such great work. So I’m really just loving working with her, and I love what she’s done with the character.
Jason Ritter and Skye P. Marshall
Courtesy of Sonja Flemming/CBS
We’re only through Episode 6, but why was this a good episode to really dig into Ellie’s death, and the case being connected to the past as well?
Because we introduced all the characters and had gotten you a little bit more and more in each episode about who they are and what their backstories were. The season was always designed to have these benchmark flashback episodes that tie into the present and give us a little bit more about why, why now, and how did we get here?
This episode was designed around the inciting moment that Matty decided to start the plan, and then how that connects with Olympia [Skye P. Marshall)] and Julian [Jason Ritter]. I think the audience has been waiting to find out what was their last straw: What were they like together or apart? We always thought in the writers’ room around Episode 6 we were going to be doing this. And then there’s another one at Episode 12, and they’re kind of spaced out like that.
Because this one is flashback heavy, is that something you’re going to do regularly moving on or more sparingly?
Sparingly. But for big moments or turning points or for big things that have to be understood, then we’ll give more time to the flashbacks. I feel like we have flashbacks a little bit built into the structure of the show, because of what happens at the end of the episode — you are always flashing back to something.
The case in this episode with the baby formula contamination feels very ripped-from-the- headlines. Is that the origin of this case?
Yeah, definitely. That was all in our minds, and then wanting a case that took place at one time, and that they’re now getting a second bite of the apple. And the link between parents and their children, and the different ways that we grieve, that’s the show at large. It is a lot about grief and how you keep going after the unimaginable happens. This was a way to tap into that in a deep way for Matty, and also tap into it for the characters of the week. When Julian and Olympia first came onto that case, they were at such a fragile moment in their relationship, and the storm of emotion of that case proved too much for them to hold together.
Because the show is so topical, with the presidential election results, do you see that affecting the show’s storytelling moving forward?
Yes, Season 1 is wrapped, so we don’t come back until next year, but we’re always going to be looking at what’s going on and how our characters deal with it, I would say. So I feel like our characters are very interested, especially Olympia, in social issues and social justice, and so how new rules and laws change is going to be something that, of course, we’ll look at.
Left to right Leah Lewis, David Del Rio and Kathy Bates
Courtesy of Sonja Flemming/CBS
Given this episode hit big on Ellie’s story — with seeing pictures of her, and what her loss means to Matty — is there possibly more to the case of her death coming?
What you do learn more about is who Ellie was, and what the circumstances were around her life and death. Matty is looking for how it has to do with her daughter, but it also has to do with many people that she thinks should have been alerted sooner to the dangers of opioids and the over-prescription of them. Ellie is who she is focused on, and being so close to all these people makes her revisit a lot of that wound and process it in a way that she hadn’t processed before.
Here, she thinks she’s going to go in and solve this crime, and what she doesn’t realize is how it cracks her open emotionally, and revisiting moments in her daughter’s life and in her daughter’s death and the circumstances around that. Episode 6 allows you to see the moment where she decided, “I’m going to go forward with this,” and you’ve learned more about that day over the course of the episode. But throughout the season, you will be learning more about Ellie and her life, and everything surrounding her death.
Stanley shows up as someone who knows Matty Kingston, and is also tied to Ellie and could blow up her entire plan. Will we see him again?
The most important thing is how Matty is feeling, like her world is starting to get smaller and smaller, and she is starting to do more and more things that are painful to her in order to keep her cruise going. So in this episode, in order to protect her identity, she had to be really cruel to this person who was a grieving father. She had to basically say, “Leave me alone and don’t contact me again,” which is as horrible a thing as she can imagine, having gone through that and knowing his kid is missing.
All of these difficulties are stacking up on Matty. It’s one more dramatization of the fact that in order to get this one goal that she wants, so many other morals are getting compromised along the way, and she’s hurting so many people as she goes. It’s part of what gets her to that moment when she says, “Maybe this is too far.”
I was waiting for Olympia to have a moment where she remembered it was Matty who spilled the coffee on her in that flashback, and that didn’t happen. Was that ever a talking point in the writers’ room?
Except that Matty’s invisible to her, at that moment. It’s like, why would she ever remember this old lady who accidentally spilled coffee? She’s invisible. It’s a complex thing, but in this moment, Olympia’s thinking about her marriage and her family and this old lady spills something on her. She’s nothing to her at that moment, which is what makes Matty, of course, think, “I can do this.”
Talk to me about Olympia and Julian, who have been getting on better ground in the last few episodes. But what are some of the complications coming for them?
Everything’s going to be rocky, but they’re going to have to figure out what it was that broke them apart in the first place. They’re in a different space, and that’s the question as they push and pull throughout the season. There’s a lot pulling them together, and a lot that’s pushing them apart. So right now they’re the closest that we’ve seen them so far.
Kathy Bates and Sam Anderson
Courtesy of Robert Voets/CBS
How much does Matty’s and her husband Edwin’s (Sam Anderson) health play into what’s coming? We’re already seeing the impact of Matty’s plan on them, as well as their grandson Alfie (Aaron D. Harris).
They’re grandparents, and this health scare was a real wake-up call for Matty. We always want to take the more outrageous elements in the show and then ground them with real human drama. Part of that is at 75, there’s going to be a health toll, and then treating that seriously — that’s what we do take seriously going forward. Edwin and Matty’s mortality is something they think about a lot, especially in light of their daughter passing and the responsibility of raising a 13-year-old.
Matty’s changed as a result of her friendship with Olympia, and some modern parenting comes at Matty and that creates a little conflict with Edwin as well. Also, just how much to involve him is constantly on their minds, and something that they clash over and sometimes agree over.
Will the next episode, airing Dec. 5, continue what this episode explored?
Yes, it’s picks up all of these threads. The exciting thing at the end of this episode is Matty is really thinking, “Maybe I should not be doing this.” So we’re seeing the origin of her deciding to do this, at the same time as she’s thinking: “Maybe I’ve made the wrong decision. I’m hurting people left and right. There’s so much pain that’s being dredged up, and it’s not going to solve the fact that my daughter’s gone.” She really comes close to saying, “You know, what I have to do in order to avenge my daughter’s death is be a great parent to her child.”
But then they give her the chance to work on pharma at the firm. It’s like, “Oh, my God, I’m right there!” so she says yes, and you can imagine Edwin will not be thrilled because they had come to a decision. We’re going to pick that up, and we’re going to pick up with Matty getting what she’s asked for. She’s going to be working with Julian in the next episode, and she is going to work directly with the people that she holds responsible. It gets even more difficult for her.
As Matty is lying and manipulating everyone, she’s also growing closer with people at the firm — how do you navigate that so we don’t think she’s going too far?
What’s fun about watching is that you’re rooting for her, and then all of a sudden, you should be like, “Wait, am I rooting for her to hurt someone else? That’s not cool!” She’s snowing us, too. We said the central love story of the show is Matty and Olympia, and you don’t know if Olympia is telling the truth, and we know Matty’s not telling the truth. What does that do to that relationship? And how real can it be? That’s the big, long arc.
With Matty’s little homespun sayings and quips, is there a list of those sayings in the writers’ room for when you need one?
No, we just write them into scripts and make things up. There are certain things that she comes back to a lot. She tells a lot of stories about Cindy Shapiro, and you’ll hear more about her. She says, “Believe you me,” and she has certain things that she says a lot. Kathy also gives us some good ones.
Do you feel the need for, or will we see more, callbacks to the original show?
We’ll use the music sparingly. Whenever we have a chance to do something or eat something, it’s going to be a hot dog and stuff like that. She’ll tell some jokes around it, but we’re not really doing anything specific vis a vis the original show because it’s so not. But if she meets a superfan of “Matlock,” then we’ll talk a lot about “Matlock”!
This interview has been edited and condensed.
