Perry Mason's Chris Chalk On How Real-World Tragedies And BTS Changes During The Long Wait For Season 2 Affected His Character
A lot happened between Perry Mason Seasons 1 and 2.
Fans of HBO’s Perry Mason waited a long time for Season 2 to arrive, as Season 1 premiered back in June 2020, and the renewal announcement came a month later. Well, after over two and a half years, Perry Mason Season 2 finally debuted, reuniting audiences with Matthew Rhys’ title character and allies like Juliet Rylance’s Della Street and Chris Chalk’s Paul Drake. Season 2 also saw Jack Amiel and Michael Begler taking over as the showrunners following the departure of creators Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald. While speaking with CinemaBlend, Chalk explained how the long wait for Season 2 and the big behind-the-scenes change, plus real world tragedies that have happened during Perry Mason’s run, affected how he handled his character.
First off, given that the wait between Perry Mason Seasons 1 and 2 was fairly lengthy by TV standards, I asked Chris Chalk (who’s also know for playing Lucius Fox on Gotham) if the hiatus affected his ability to get back into the character of Paul Drake when it came time to return to the show, or if that didn’t factor in. Chalk shared that not only was it the former for him on a personal level, but for everyone who worked on the show, saying:
When we left off with Paul Drake at the end of Perry Mason Season 1, he’d resigned from the Los Angeles Police Department and agreed to work as the private investigator for the law firm Perry inherited from the late E.B. Jonathan. However, in the Season 2 premiere, it was revealed that because Perry and Della are now focusing on civil cases, there hasn’t been much of a need for Paul’s services, requiring him to look elsewhere for work. Following the murder of Brooks McCutcheon though, Perry has agreed to take on the suspects, brothers Rafael and Mateo Gallardo, as his clients, and Paul has been brought in to investigate what exactly went down.
As Chris Chalk detailed, though Perry Mason is a period piece, it’s important that the show still felt relevant to the present, particularly because of how many issues from the early 1930s are, unfortunately, still present today. That extra wait time between two seasons gave Chalk and the cast and crew to infuse Season 2 with the right kind of “purpose,” while still keeping the show entertaining. Regarding the change of Perry Mason showrunners, Chalk started off by saying the following about how this behind-the-scenes shift affected the dynamic on set:
In addition to re-teaming with Perry Mason and Della Street in Perry Mason Season 2, Paul Drake finds his latest journey complicated by the fact that he unwittingly provided information that led to Melvin Perkins, a businessman who pours money from his illegal activities on the side back into Los Angeles’ African American community, being arrested by the District Attorney’s office. So between that, no longer being a police officer and being looped into yet another high-profile murder case in the city, Paul has a lot on his plate right now. Going back to Chris Chalk, although he recalled a moment when he had to question some dialogue choices for Paul in Perry Mason Season 2, he felt that by the time they hit the third episode, everyone had gotten into a good groove working with each other. In his words:
New episodes of Perry Mason premiere Mondays at 9 pm ET on HBO, and you can learn what other shows are currently airing/streaming with our 2023 TV schedule. If you haven’t had the chance to start Perry Mason Season 2 yet, make sure you look over the big things to remember from Season 1 before you start watching the new episodes with your HBO Max subscription.
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Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.