Reasonable Doubt escaped the post-Hollywood strikes cancellation that impacted several other freshmen shows. Now in its second season, hotshot L.A. defense attorney Jax Stewart (Emayatzy Corinealdi) has lost a bit of her fire from last season.
After being kidnapped and nearly killed by Damon (Michael Ealy), a man she was convinced got incarcerated because she failed him as an attorney, Jax is understandably traumatized when the second season of the Hulu legal drama opens. She and husband Lewis (McKinley Freeman) are hooking up and in couples therapy, but aren’t officially back together. Their problem, however, has never been in the sheets. Instead, their main clash is over her work/wife balance, especially when it comes to their kids.
Making things more tense, Shanelle (Shannon Kane), her best friend since childhood, fights back after enduring years of domestic abuse at the hands of her star NFL husband and needs an attorney, a great one, to keep her out of prison. But Jax can’t represent her and keep her promise to Lewis to prioritize him and their family. When she taps Corey Cash (Morris Chestnut) as Shanelle’s lead attorney, tensions escalate more, not less, for Jax, especially as long-held secrets become exposed. The case goes left, and another potential entanglement once again threatens her marriage.
“What I wanted to do differently, or I should say, kind of expand upon, is, obviously, we saw Jax go through a lot of trauma at the end of season one and I really didn’t want to just shrug that off,” Reasonable Doubt creator/showrunner Raamla Mohamed tells The Hollywood Reporter, when speaking alongside stars Emayatzy Corinealdi, McKinley Freeman and latest addition, Morris Chestnut during the recent annual Essence Festival.
“I read this book Rest is Resistance [by Tricia Hersey] about the importance of rest and Black women, and how it’s actually something that was ingrained in us to keep working back in slavery,” the Scandal and Little Fires Everywhere alum shared. “In some ways, taking a break for yourself and making sure you’re taking care of your own mental health is like resistance.”
By highlighting Jax having to risk her “sister” potentially going to prison by not representing her to show her husband that she’s committed to him and their two kids, Mohamed intentionally presents a “heightened version” of the work/home balance millions of women struggle to create every day. “Jax has to be more vulnerable to really do the work, because I do believe that all of us, in order to be better, have to do the work. That’s where I started and everything else kind of fell into place.”
Shifting production to Atlanta from L.A. where the show is still based gave them all an extra boost, Mohamed shared. “We came to Atlanta to a crew of people who are already fans and loved working on the show. They would come up to me and say how they’re excited about the script. We had a scene and our boom operator and someone else during our rehearsal were like, ‘oh no,’ and we all started laughing. Everyone was so welcoming, and it was a really exciting place to be.”
Adding Chestnut, who to Mohamed’s delight “fit in seamlessly,” to the mix was another wise move. “Obviously, we’ve all been fans of his work for a long time, and you’re sometimes a little worried [about] the big guy coming in,” she admitted. “But he came in, he asked questions, he was interested in the scripts, into the character. He respected everyone and just fit in so well and was fun to work with.”
The 1990s golden boy, whose huge feature film hits include Boyz N the Hood, his stunning introduction and The Best Man, was eager to join. “Honestly, when my agent and my manager called and asked if I’d be interested, it was a ‘hell yeah.’ I saw the first season and loved the first season, and then Raamla sent over a breakdown of the character and the storylines, and I said, ‘I’m in.’ It wasn’t even a question.”
Chestnut, who has extended his reach to television and most recently appeared in the fresh BET+ series Diarra from Detroit, feels that his character Corey Cash, a legal star from a pedigreed family who champions domestic abuse survivors but has a complicated personal life, “could have easily been a one-dimensional character [with the attitude of] ‘hey, I’m strong; I’m coming to win’ and that’s it. But what Raamla did so well is she crafted the story in his personal history, which allows him to show some vulnerability in the courtroom where some people may think he’s so confident. But he has vulnerability there and then in his personal life with his father. And those are the things which I love.”
Corinealdi also praises Reasonable Doubt’s writing, especially when it comes to the nuances around Jax and Lewis’ marriage. “When I read that first script, and Raamla and I sat down for dinner, I said, ‘How did you manage to put your finger right on the issues that you have in marriage that you can’t even really verbalize?’ It’s not about one thing; it’s always the other little things. And she was able to nail it. One of the beauties I think of the show is that we get to explore all of those little things that just make up the bigger crack that you see. And that’s what people really like about the show.”
“Marriage is work,” Corinealdi continued, addressing the second season. “Jax and Lewis, they’re in love. They have a beautiful family, but they’ve run into a couple of speed bumps. That tends to happen in marriages. Sometimes you miss each other in translation. When things get lost and those cracks come, they get deeper, and they get wider and wider and wider. What we saw in the first season, they’re now trying to work through that and figure out what [their lives] look like now because of what happened. It’s changed Jax; it’s changed the foundation of their marriage in a lot of ways and trust is now truly in question…. it’s a new place for her. She hasn’t really been able to show this level of vulnerability. With Lewis, she’s trying to be there a bit more, be more present, without losing herself.”
“A lot of the times people can get overwhelmed in situations when they’re not certain what to do, when there’s so many different things going on,” chimed in Freeman. “In the context of this marriage, a lot of people have these ideas about what they will and won’t do, but then when confronted with the reality of your life and the stakes of having kids and a woman that you’re in love with and a life you don’t want to leave, like what are you willing to evolve from to have the life that you want to live?”
Freeman continued, “I think that’s a really cool journey for Lewis, not only just in terms of his relationship with Jax, but that also includes the kids and also becoming a better pool of knowledge in terms of how Jav orbits in her world and giving her space and understanding how to be supportive husband of such a dynamic, powerful woman and still be a man in that situation. Those are the interesting things we explore this season.”
The first two episodes of Reasonable Doubt are now streaming on Hulu and Disney+, with new episodes dropping weekly on Thursdays.
