‘Matlock’ Creator Explains Big Twist of New Kathy Bates Show

Spoilers: "Matlock" isn't *just* a procedural. Creator Jennie Snyder Urman explains to IndieWire the premiere twist that will guide the season.

Editor’s note: This story contains spoilers for the first episode of CBS‘s “Matlock.”

“That’s the thing about older women — no one sees us coming.”

That’s Madeline Matlock (Kathy Bates) in the first episode of CBS’s rebooted “Matlock,” inspired, of course, by the iconic lawyer TV show. But this is a fresh take on the character — Bates’ Matlock isn’t a long-lost daughter of the fictional icon. No, she’s just a lawyer who suddenly has a grandson to raise and therefore needs a new job at a fancy law firm to pay the bills.

Orrr at least that’s what viewers spend most of the premiere episode, which aired September 22, thinking. But 10 minutes before the end credits roll, after the moving case of the week has been solved, TV audiences learn that actually, Matlock is a fake last name for Madeline. In reality, she’s undercover at the law firm Jacobson Moore because of her daughter, who died of an opioid overdose. Matty learned that one of three lawyers at the firm hid documents that could have taken opioids off the market 10 years sooner, thereby saving her daughter. So she’s going to figure out who it was that hid the paperwork, she explains via voiceover in the ending seconds, and she’s going to make them pay.

Not exactly your parents’ “Matlock.”

“I read an article about a law firm that was sanctioned for not turning over discovery in the opioid case, and, you know, you get a $200,000 fine or something like that, and it’s so destructive, what not turning over [evidence] does,” creator Jennie Snyder Urman explained to IndieWire. “And I started thinking, ‘Where is that moral line where you’re obligated to serve your client, of course, but it feels criminal?’ It feels criminal to just pile papers when there’s a public health crisis going on and we need the information to deal with it, and to start moving beyond it.

“So that had been in my head for a while,” she continued, “and I’d been interested in talking about that, and talking about addiction and talking about loss. Then when I was thinking about Matty and how I would want to use the character, I was thinking, ‘What would be big enough to have this woman go back into the law firm, what would also give that sort of deep emotional grounding to the whole enterprise, so that we could go and we could be on her side’ … and we know that there’s something so deep that she’s trying to heal through this.”

This season-long runner will have plenty of twists, but never fear about this turning into a years-long never-ending mystery without a conclusion, Urman promises. “You will know definitively by the end of the episode [in this season finale] who did what, when, and how. So we will solve that, and then that will sort of open up veins of story,” she said.

Rebooting “Matlock” wasn’t the “Jane the Virgin” creator’s original goal. But her production company inquired about the “Matlock” rights, and then she learned Eric Christian Olsen’s production company (Cloud Nine) actually had the rights to the title. He asked her if she would want to write it. “I wasn’t originally looking for a legal show at that moment, I was thinking I was just in a different space. But I always say, ‘Let me think about it.’ I never turn anything down, because you never know where inspiration comes and then [I] took a long, long walk, because that’s how I think of all my ideas and projects. And by the end of it, I just had this take and it felt like something that I had to do suddenly.”

Star aligned when Urman learned this was a story Kathy Bates (!) was interested in telling. “I was in shock that she read the script, she read it so quickly, and that she wanted to meet,” Urman said. “And then, she gave me such a gift when we went to meet, because I was very nervous, of course. And everybody was like, ‘Sell her on it.’ And I came in and she said, ‘I wouldn’t change a word. Let’s talk about the character.’ So we got to just get right into the work of it, and talk and get to know each other. … And we just got to start talking creatively right away, which is both of our passions. … And so I left, and I called everyone, and I said, ‘Well, she said she’s doing it.'”

Following a special preview on September 22, “Matlock” will premiere October 17 on CBS.