2 l June
21 - 27, 2020
Northeast Oregon TV Weekly
Matthew Rhys is HBO’s new, very
different ‘Perry Mason’
BY JAY BOBBIN
Any preconceived notion you might have of “Perry
Mason” is about to be tossed out of court.
The most enduring image of novelist Erle Stanley
Gardner’s iconic character surely is the urbane defense
attorney played by Raymond Burr in a 1957-66 television
classic that remains a staple of nostalgia-driven networks.
However, a younger, scrappier Mason fuels a limited HBO
series debuting Sunday, June 21. Executive-produced by
Robert Downey Jr. and his wife Susan, and set in the
Depression era, it casts Emmy winner Matthew Rhys (“The
Americans”) in the title role while exploring Mason’s roots as
an unconventional detective as much as a nascent lawyer.
“That is why I jumped at the opportunity,” the friendly
Rhys confirms of helping to generate a new Mason. “When
the initial call came, this strange thing went through my
head: ‘Perry Mason?’ I realize more and more that I’d had a
unique relationship to it without necessarily having a true
grasp of what it was. I was aware of the (original) show, but
in true recollection, I wasn’t sure that I ever watched it ...
though my grandparents did.
“You feel like you know this identity of a trial lawyer who
got everybody to confess on the stand,” adds Rhys, “but as
soon as you heard that HBO was remaking ‘Perry Mason,’
you knew immediately, ‘Well, OK. That’s going to be a
Matthew Rhys stars in
“Perry Mason,” premiering
Sunday on HBO.
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very different take.’ And it is. It’s the origin story of how he
became a trial lawyer, and I thought, ‘Oh, how interesting.’
And then I read the first script, and that was that.”
Such other familiar characters as Della Street (now played
by Juliet Rylance) and Paul Drake (Chris Chalk) also are
reinvented by the “Perry Mason” reboot. John Lithgow (as
Mason’s mentor in the law), Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan
Black”) and Robert Patrick (“Scorpion”) are among the
cast members as well. HBO-series veteran Tim Van Patten
(“Game of Thrones,” “The Sopranos”) is the director and an
executive producer of the show.
In preparing to play Mason, the Welsh-born Rhys – the
real-life partner of his fellow “Americans” star Keri Russell
– had a valuable resource in Tom Hanks while they made
the recent movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,”
since Hanks had done the similarly styled 2002 film “Road
to Perdition.”
“When you’re engulfed in something on this kind of scale,
it’s hard not to believe the world you’re in,” Rhys reasons
of the “Perry Mason” costumes and production design that
are so evocative of the early 1930s. “You don’t see anything
but hundreds of supporting actors in the costumes and cars,
and whole streets have been made to look the way they were
then, so it only strengthens the make-believe.”