[This article contains mild spoilers from season three of Reasonable Doubt.]
Three seasons into Reasonable Doubt, creator Raamla Mohamed has the same focus for the Hulu legal drama as she did ahead of its series premiere on Sept. 27, 2022. “I want to create shows that I’m a fan of, and that I never stop being a fan when I’m thinking of stories or we’re talking about it in the writers room,” Mohamed tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m trying to be entertained. Life is hard. My hours are precious, so I want my hour to feel good.”
To that end, in this week’s season three premiere, Reasonable Doubt got back to its season one roots with the dual focus of show lead Jax Stewart (Emayatzy Corinealdi) staring down a high-profile case while managing family issues at home after a second season in which the personal and professional became intertwined. As a refresher, Jax found herself representing her close friend Shanelle Tucker [Shannon Kane] who was on trial for the murder of her abusive husband.
This time around, it’s a former child star named Ozzie (Kyle Bary) whose secrets Jax has to unravel while attempting to squash the lawsuit Toni (Tristan Cunningham) brought against her and her husband Lewis (McKinley Freeman) following the death of their son, born out of the previous affair they had in season one. All the while, Jax is also managing microaggressions at her firm, and a potential new partner behind the bench, Bill Sterling, played by Power star Joseph Sikora.
Below, Mohamed talks with THR about shaping Reasonable Doubt’s third season, bringing in guest stars Lori Harvey and Love Island’s Kordell Beckham, and how long she sees the show continuing.
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Season three starts with Jax finding someone we don’t know in some state we can only tell isn’t good, and then the episode flashes back to six months prior. Why did you format the premiere that way?
What I liked about season one is that there were two mysteries going. You had: Who kidnapped Jax? And also, who killed Kaleesha [Perri Camper]? I wanted to go back to that format for season three. Season two was very personal for Jax. It was about her defending her best friend — it was about their relationship, and we knew their relationship was very complicated. But now we’ve seen Jax go through this healing, this therapy with Lewis — now let’s bring back that case where there are multiple people and, you don’t know. Like with Brayden [Sean Patrick Thomas in season one], is the client lying?
The client this time is another high-profile Black man in an interracial relationship with his stylist, who turns up dead and whom his family disapproves of. That’s kind of all audiences know so far in episode one. What issues are you going to explore there?
The Ozzie character is so complicated. One issue is the idea of entitlement. When he goes, in episode one, and talks to the police, it’s like he’s talking to a friend. There’s no acknowledgement that he could be in trouble or that people could think ill things about him. But the other thing is we start to dig deep into addiction and abuse, and you start to really unravel how Ozzie got to the place that he is, his family relationship, how his parents treated him. And really it becomes kind of a maternal relationship between him and J. They say that the age you become famous is the age you stay, essentially, mentally and emotionally, and I think a lot of that is true for Ozzie. There’s an arrested development there that happens that is not only explained by his fame, but also some of the trauma that he’s experienced, some of which mirrors the trauma that Jax has experienced too.
With the season two finale, I assumed the lawsuit Toni brings against Lewis and Jax would be the big case at the center of the season, did you consider that?
I always found that it was going to be a personal story. First of all, it didn’t feel big enough to be a main story. I always try to check myself as an audience member, in terms of what I like. So, if it were me, I’d be like, “I hope they’re not trying to make Toni the case.” It’s funny, I saw some people comment like that and I was like, “Don’t worry, it’s not; it’s going to be fine.” So if you watch, you see Toni’s anger and how she attached herself and kind of thought her and Lewis were going to become this unit. I think there was a little bit of hope for something later. So when Lewis then stepped away, she felt like she lost two things and we explore that in the first couple episodes, and then a little later it comes up a little bit, too.
Were you ever going to have Toni not lose her and Lewis’ baby?
Tristan, the actress, was pregnant in real life, and I wrote the story before I knew. One of the second ADs came in like, “Oh, we don’t have to fit her for a belly because she’s pregnant,” and I was like, “Oh, no,” because I knew what was going to happen. So one of the EPs and I had a Zoom with Tristan and walked her through the whole story and I said, “Look, I am not going to pretend that I know what it would be like that you have to play this storyline” — she was exactly the same months as the character would be — so I said, “tell me if you’re not okay with that.” I would’ve killed her character and then dealt with figuring that out, but luckily, she was game and Disney was very supportive.
She had a mental health coordinator and our line producer worked with her about doctor’s appointments, making sure that we also wrapped her out soon so that she could be done before she couldn’t fly. It was really important to me to make sure she was okay. So when she texted me, “I had my baby,” I was like, “Oh, thank the Lord Jesus Christ.” That was the happiest day ever. And she was having a girl, so I also was like, “I’ll change the sex [of Lewis and Toni’s baby].” Sometimes I write things and shit comes true. But [Tristan’s] such a great actress. I was so happy that she was willing to tell the story, and it was an important one that resonated with people. That’s why I hope in season three, despite whatever you feel about Toni, that you still feel for her because at the end of the day, she did lose her baby.
When we talked at the end of season two, you didn’t know if you would get Morris Chestnut back, but you did. How did that unfold, and will we see more developed with his character, Corey Cash, this season?
Listen, I love Morris so much and I really feel like he embodied Corey Cash so it was really great to have him back. He’s the star of his own show, Watson, so it’s one of those things where you’re not sure, schedule-wise, how much we could have, so we just try to get as much of him as we can. With Morris a little goes a long way. It’s nice to see him and Jax interact, especially in the first few episodes. He’s in another one later in the season, too.
Well, we do have the new edition of Joseph Sikora to the cast. How did that come about and what is his character Bill going to bring into the mix?
First of all, I was a huge Power fan. I watched all the episodes, and Tommy is an iconic character. I think what Courtney Kemp did with that show is amazing and what’s fun is that Joseph, for lack of a better [phrase], he just plays a white dude. He’s a white, ambitious lawyer. He’s married to a Black woman, so you see a little bit of that swag come out, and you start to understand that he kind of has his own code-switching at work in some ways. It just really shows Joseph’s range, that he is just as believable as Tommy as he is as Bill.
To that point, it seems there’s a conversation brewing about the experience of being the only one in the workplace. We see Jax having some difficulty at her firm as a Black female partner, and even Lewis happily hiring a Black man on his team.
Yeah, that becomes a storyline all the way through the end of the season. And I will say it was kind of a crew favorite, that Lewis-Sam storyline, I think because all of us have dealt with employees or where things have turned in a way that’s surprising, or you’re doing someone else’s job that you feel like you shouldn’t be doing. That became, honestly, a very relatable storyline across race, gender, sexuality.
The guest actor list is stacked this season with Brandee Evans, Kash Doll, Lori Harvey, Kordell Beckham. What can you tease about their characters?
Well, what’s great to me is there are 22 Black roles on the show and there’s no token Black characters. It’s not like I only have two or three roles, and now I’ve got all of Black Hollywood trying to be here. What’s exciting about that is that I can cast these actors who’ve been in this game for a long time, who’ve done various roles, who get to shine in different ways on the show. What I hope is that people get to see them in a different light, and that helps their career and the next thing they want to do. On the flip side, with a Lori Harvey or Kordell, I get to throw a role to someone who is trying to get started. All of these people auditioned. Lori had a callback, and she really took it very seriously; she had an acting coach. Kordell came in and read. So that’s what’s exciting, you get to see these people possibly at the start of new careers.
It’s kind of like what happened last year with Kandi [Burruss]. I met Kandi on a plane. I met Lori at EssenceFest, and we just had conversations. At some point, I was like, “I think I do have a role that you’d be good for. Because I’m not trying to set you up to fail. I want a role that makes sense for you”. Kandi really just killed it last season. I said, “Look, you have no money. A previous drug addict is not going to have her face beat,” and she was like, “Let’s do it.” Similar with Lori, her nails, I said, “I want them to be grown out; put the tip right here [in the middle of the nail].” She was so down for that, just showing up, hair in a ponytail. It’s hard to make her look bad, but it really is important to me if you’re coming onto the show, that you really disappear into the character.
Do you have a finite season plan for Reasonable Doubt or is this something you feel like you could write for forever?
I don’t know about forever (laughs). At first, I thought maybe four seasons, but then it changes. Things evolve and I’m like, maybe five. I’m not really sure. I know I don’t want to push it past its time. Succession did such a great job where it ended, you still wanted more but you were like, what a great series. I never want people to feel like, “They should end this. It’s not good anymore.” But I look at shows like The Chi and what Lena Waithe has done and how that show has a different life with different characters, so you never know. I’m sure if you asked Lena years ago, she was probably like, “No, I can’t see it going to season eight,” but now here we are and the show’s bigger than ever. So I like to say that I feel like God will tell me when it’s over and it’s time to go.
God, not Hulu?
God might tell Hulu (laughs), but somebody will tell me.
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New episodes of Reasonable Doubt stream Thursdays on Hulu.