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Juliet Rylance & Chris Chalk on ‘Perry Mason’ Season 2 and Their Characters

Mar 28, 2023


In Season 2 of the HBO series Perry Mason, the height of the Great Depression sees the man himself (Matthew Rhys), along with assistant Della Street (Juliet Rylance) and ex-cop Paul Drake (Chris Chalk), on a new legal case, this time pitting the haves directly against the have nots. A high-profile murder case tests Perry Mason and pushes him to the edge, as he fights for a pair of brothers that have no one else on their side and everything stacked against them.

During this interview with Collider, co-stars Rylance and Chalk talked about what they most enjoyed about their Season 2 character arcs, how deeply Paul Drake gets to know himself, exploring Della Street’s sexuality in this time period, Della’s memorable courtroom moment, and getting to see Paul’s life at home.
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Collider: One of the great things about the second season of a TV series is that we already know who these characters are, so you guys get to dig deeper into them and we get to learn more about them. What did you each most enjoy about your character journey for Season 2 and what you got to dig into with them? Was there a highlight for what you got to explore?

JULIET RYLANCE: The fact that we got to delve deeper into their personal lives, through this story in this incredible world, was amazing this season. The relationship with Perry, at the beginning, is so tenuous and uncertain. All the way through, you don’t know whether the trust between them is building or weakening, and that was an amazing journey through the season. I loved that. And similarly, the three of us together and those relationships, I loved how we gently are trying to forge our way through this story. Personally for Della, it was her private life and having more of her world being revealed, and this great love interest, and Hazel, her trusty girlfriend of all these years. Just her dealing with that situation, I found really, really exciting.

CHRIS CHALK: A lot of the first season, we see Paul’s performance. We don’t really see behind his performance very much because it’s not required. But in the second season, we start to realize how false that performance is and how quickly it all can fall apart, when just the slightest thing comes out of place. I quite enjoy playing that displacement, that confusion, that being lost. And seeing some of the edges of his emotional range is pretty exciting.

Image via HBO

I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that the journey that Paul takes this season really teaches him his own value and worth.

CHALK: Yes.

And it leaves him with a clear idea of what he does and doesn’t want to do. What was it like to have that discovery with him this season and to leave him in a place where, even if he’s not sure how to get what he wants, he at least knows what he doesn’t want?

CHALK: Also, to do it during a pandemic adds that extra layer, but it’s important because it adds a layer of tension to what is already tense, and a layer of unknown to what is already unknown. It was delicious and exhausting for Paul to always be at the edge and at his limit and confused. It was a wonderful exhaustion, but I definitely went home, all the time, like, “Oh, my God, I’ve gotta go back tomorrow and be lost some more?” So, it was delicious. We’re always grateful, as actors, to receive something that’s so well-rounded. And then, there are the consequences you’ve gotta deal with.

It’s so interesting to watch Paul’s journey, stuck between all these white people wanting something from him, but also the Black community wanting something from him too.

CHALK: Yeah, he’s split between his expectation, his family, his community, and then all the white people, and that’s not even expectation so much as it’s, “Please don’t mess up because I don’t want to be killed, at any moment.” There’s a ton of pressure. We often relate the show to 2023, and though all of the issues are almost the same, we have so many outlets with which to say how we feel. Back then, there was no Twitter, and there were no groups huddling together to talk. Back then, if you huddled together in a group, you got shot. It’s an awful thing to have to deal with, in so much isolation of things that Paul had to deal with. He had very few outlets.

Image via HBO

Juliet, it’s just as interesting to watch Della and her sexuality because we get this sense that Della really knows who she is and she’s open with partners that she’s with, but she can’t be open in public. We see this strong, outspoken woman, who can’t necessarily be strong and outspoken in everything What was most important to you, in exploring that?

RYLANCE: It’s a real tension in Della and in her life. She’s this strong, opinionated, very persistent woman, who perseveres and gets things done, and then has this really secret, hidden life that she’s quite scared of. The reality then, at that time, is that if she’d been found out to have been gay, she could have been arrested, put in jail, and lost her job and any chance to ever practice law again. So, the stakes are really high. And then, there’s all the freedom that Anita St. Pierre brings, with this world of being a writer in television. There are a lot of unsaid rules and clubs and places for people to meet, and all of that is hidden to Della, in many ways, until it’s gradually revealed. For someone so forceful to feel voiceless and hidden, it creates such a strange tension in a person, and I found that really enjoyable to play. There’s that wonderful scene that (showrunners) Jack [Amiel] and Michael [Begler] wrote, when Anita finally persuades Della to come to that club and it’s the first time you see all these LGBTQ couples, dressed however they wanna dress. Seeing a place like that, that exists, it’s such a moment for Della to know there are people like her out there and she can do that. I found that the whole exploration of her personal life really infused the main story with a lot more grit.

What was it like to have that memorable scene in episode six in the courtroom, when she insists on taking over with the more delicate line of questioning? What was it like to have a moment like that for her?

RYLANCE: It felt really moving, actually, the biggest reason being it was one of the first times, as Della, that I felt like, “Oh, my God, me being a woman, in this moment, is actually what we need. Being a woman might be the one thing that, in this line of questioning, I might have something over Perry doing it.” And also, the fact that it was about protecting a woman and her honor and what had happened to her, it felt like the perfect platform that Jack and Michael set up in the writing. It’s the one moment that Della would go, “No, no, no, let me handle it. I’ve got it. I can do this.” I love the way that emerged, spontaneously. She steps in, and Perry lets her. That’s something, as well. For Paul and Della, we do need Perry to allow us to be seen in the room. The fact that we spend most of the time annoyed with him for being such a jerk . . .

CHALK: But he’s a hero.

RYLANCE: He is a hero because he is actually seeing us and helping us, and we are, eventually, a team, in some way.

Image via HBO 

Chris, what was it like to balance all of that heavy that you were doing, with having moments in the relationship between your character and his wife, and showing them dancing together, or showing why these people have been together and how well they know each other?

CHALK: Inside all the tragedies, and we’re all going through some pretty tough stuff, we still smile. We still have good days inside the chaos of the umbrella of death and demise. It was important to show that, even inside this life-changing couple of months that Paul is having, or is about to have, there’s still so much love. That’s what he’s fighting for, to have every day be like that dance scene with his wife. If every day could be like that, then that’s the perfect day. But unfortunately, that’s one day out of 60. The more we can bring that into our lives, the better, in general. Look at there, I just saved the world, all by myself.

Perry Mason airs on Monday nights on HBO and is available to stream at HBO Max.

Disclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by filmibee.
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