‘Presumed Innocent’ producers J.J. Abrams and David E. Kelley on teaming up, ‘contemptible’ characters, and season 2
It was the “love of the book” that brought the powerhouse duo of producer J.J. Abrams and showrunner David E. Kelley together for Apple TV+’s reimagining of Scott Turow’s bestselling legal thriller “Presumed Innocent.”
They’d vowed to team up for years, but it took COVID for the stars — and their schedules — to finally align to allow them to put their shared creative talents together. Given health restrictions, studios were looking for projects that could be produced in contained circumstances, so courtroom dramas were a natural place to hunt for ideas. Abrams asked Kelley if there was any book that he’d be interested in adapting, “and the first one that came to mind was ‘Presumed Innocent’,” Kelley tells Gold Derby in our exclusive video interview. As luck would have it. Abrams’ production company had secured the rights years earlier. Watch the video interview above.
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“David was open to reconceiving the story, and trusting the characters to see where ir went, without being prescriptive,” says Abrams. “It was so much fun to get the scripts and see where David was taking it — as much fun as a producer as it was to be a viewer.”
Their partnership paid off to tremendous success: “Presumed Innocent,” which starred Jake Gyllenhaal as a prosecutor (Rusty Sabich), who finds himself accused of murdering a colleague with whom he was having an affair, become Apple TV’s top drama of all time. The two already have plans to reunite for a second season, which will be based on another novel.
Kelley immediately saw the possibility in expanding the story and its characters beyond what had already been done in the 1990 movie, which starred Harrison Ford. “Barbara [Rusty’s wife] was kind of an unknown in the book and in the movie, and I really wanted to know her and feel for her and care for her,” says Kelley. The same is true of the rest of the ensemble — all flawed characters who, in Kelley’s hands, sometimes seem to be suspects themselves as the drama plays out over the course of the series’ eight episodes. Even though they’re “complicated” and “contemptible,” says Kelley, “my private fantasy is that every character will be some viewer’s favorite character.”
Gyllenhaal plays Sabich in the series; and in a fluke of casting, his real-life brother-in-law Peter Sarsgaard plays his antagonistic adversary, Tommy Molto, who seems willing to go to any lengths to convict Sabich. “He must have been the last kid picked for the team in elementary school,” jokes Kelley.
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Abrams credits Apple TV+ with letting them push the characters to extremes. “No one was ever asking us to make the characters likable,” he says. “It’s one of my favorite things about David’s writing is that again and again, characters will do things that are sometimes genuinely shocking, sometimes really off-putting and odd. And it’s the thing that makes them fully dimensional, fully realized human beings.”
That came to play in deciding who would be the ultimate culprit — whether they would follow the book and the movie or chart their own path. In fact, they didn’t even tell the cast until the last script. “We never had a scene in there where an actor was zigging instead of zagging for the sake of throwing the audience off the scent,” says Kelley.
As for season 2, “It’s definitely too early to talk specifics,” says Abrams. “It has to be about it being the right story and finding the right rhythm and the right beginning, middle, and end. It has to live up to what we were able to, what David was able to, accomplish in season one.”
Abrams has been nominated for 10 Emmys awards and won twice – once as a producer for Lost, when it won best drama in 2005, and once for directing that same year. Kelley has 12 Emmy trophies on his shelf, for shows including Big Little Lies, Ally McBeal, The Practice, Picket Fences, and L.A. Law, and is a member of the TV Academy Hall of Fame.
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