‘Reasonable Doubt’ Creator Explains That Satisfying Finale and Direction of a Potential Season 3
[This article contains spoilers from the season two finale of Reasonable Doubt.]
The case at the center of season two of Reasonable Doubt was deeply personal for Jax Stewart (Emayatzy Corinealdi) and her husband Lewis (McKinley Freeman). Jax not only found herself defending one of her closest friends, Shanelle (Shannon Kane), who was charged with first-degree murder in the death of her abusive husband JT (Christopher Mychael Watson), but also questioning a witness on the stand who, unbeknownst to her at the time, was pregnant with her husband’s child. The revelation surprisingly manages to strengthen Jax and Lewis’ marriage — complements to couple’s therapy — and it’s a united front they’ll need to maintain after being served with papers alerting them that Toni (Tristan Cunningham) is suing the couple for the death of her and Lewis’ baby in the season finale.
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“I think what really hurt her is that she thought Lewis and her would still have a bond, and obviously there’s no more bond. So part of me feels like Toni’s act is to still stay connected, and that she can’t accept that they go on and live their life, and she is sad and with nothing,” creator Raamla Mohamed tells The Hollywood Reporter in the chat below.
Despite the threat that legal action poses to the stability of the Stewart household — the couple’s children unaware that a younger half-sibling was on the way — there is a happy ending in the finale, “Encore,” that sets the stage for a bright new beginning for Shanelle. After a grueling trial, she manages to avoid prison time when she’s found guilty of manslaughter, the judge giving her credit for time served at prosecutor and domestic abuse survivor Lucy Wargo’s (Melissa Ponzio) request for leniency, after being confronted by her own abuser and learning that it was JT’s daughter who killed him while coming to her stepmother’s defense.
“I wanted some feeling of hope and happiness,” Mohamed says of choosing not to have Shanelle found guilty of first-degree murder. “I don’t know how you felt watching it, but it’s so joyful and emotional when Shanelle runs outside and they all hug and she’s free. It’s a very satisfying thing to see in the finale.”
Below, the Reasonable Doubt boss talks about shedding light on domestic abuse in season two of the Hulu legal drama and Jax’s growth as a character — including why she didn’t sleep with defense attorney Corey Cash (Morris Chestnut) when the opportunity presented itself — and her decision to stay with Lewis. Mohamed also teases where the show’s storyline could potentially go in a third season.
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I have to go back to season one and ask you the first question that came to mind when I heard Jay-Z’s “Can I Live” in the pilot episode. Who is the music supervisor and what is the music budget? Because you include a lot of contemporary hip-hop and R&B hits.
We have amazing music supervisors, Jen Malone and Whitney Pilzer. But as far as picking the songs, I pick all the songs. There’s probably, in the entire show, between seasons one and two, maybe five songs I didn’t pick. I get very into music, and sometimes when I hear certain songs, I think of the scene.
In episode seven, once it was Luther [Vandross’ “A House is Not a Home”], I was like, “He’s climbing up the stairs like that.” So, I put the songs in the script. Sometimes they change, because sometimes they can’t get cleared. But our music supervisors start the process early to try to get things cleared. They fight, but sometimes there’s songs that I like and then it’s just not evoking what I need, like episode eight in the beginning when they’re making love. The initial song was Jodeci “What About Us” because I wanted it to feel like ‘90s love, but I was like, “Yes this is happening, but they still have a lot of things to figure out so I don’t want to take away from that.”
Then there was an Usher and H.E.R. song called “Risk It All,” and I changed it to that, and that was really beautiful. But then this Muni Long song — I was listening to some of her stuff and “Make Me Forget” came on — I was like, “Ohh, this is it. This is what it’s about. I want to just be present in this moment and I want you to make me forget about all the other stuff.” And, obviously, through that episode, they realize you can’t forget about the other stuff, so I do really think about what the lyrics are saying.
In season one, audiences saw evidence of JT’s emotional abuse toward Shanelle. When did you know you wanted to take their relationship in this direction and make this case the foundation of season two?
Initially, this case was in season three or four, and the thought was that throughout the series you’d see glimpses of it so then it would make sense. But then when I got into the writers room in season one, we were talking about this and one of the writers, Tash Gray, was talking about something that happened with someone in her family and I was like, “Why am I saving this, because you don’t even know if we’re going to get a second season, let alone a season four?”
This is such a great personal case for Jax. So I knew in season one, because in every episode that you see Shanelle or JT, there’s some mention of violence or something like her saying, “Girl, I’m sleeping on the couch.” Or him saying, “I’m just trying to survive the day.” There are little things you put in so that it was a surprise at the end of season one, but it also added up.
What’s crazy is people are like, “Wow the storyline is so topical and timely,” but that was two-and-a-half years ago when we were doing this. It’s always been timely. It just that everyone else seems to be catching up to it now. Intimate partner violence has been a problem for a long time. I’m happy that we were able to shed a light on it, and I’m also happy, especially this being Domestic Violence Awareness Month, that there are more people realizing this is a big issue.
We see multiple victims and forms of partner abuse in season two. Talk about your approach to exploring domestic violence.
There’s a focus on two things when it comes to domestic violence. One is, why did you let a person put their hands on you, and then why didn’t you leave after that? There is a big focus on the physical abuse, and it’s a big part of it, obviously, because it means people’s lives end, but it actually is a small part because a lot of times the abuse starts way before someone puts their hands on them. Even with the Cassie situation, it’s like, “Well, she has money. She knew the life she was living.” She doesn’t have money. [Diddy] has the money. Everything’s paid for. If she leaves, she doesn’t have anything. And I don’t think people really understand that part of it. You don’t have any freedom.
So you are trapped in a lot of ways, in addition to the emotional gaslighting, the manipulation that is contributing to why someone stays in a relationship and also the idea that we talked about in episode eight, her trying to get the restraining order. It is very difficult to get a restraining order against anyone. And sadly, it’s even more difficult to get a restraining order against someone that you know because [the courts] always assume that you’re mad or you should try to work it out. And then it’s public and the person knows.
Then what we see with Lucy is her obviously having her own issues. I find this a lot when you have these senators or congressmen who are against gay rights and then it comes out that they have a gay lover, it’s deep self-hatred that people have. And I think for Lucy, she’s a little bit like, “I moved past it, so what’s Shanelle’s problem?” It’s not until she realizes, “I’m now in this situation I thought I moved past, and I’m experiencing a similar trapped feeling,” that it provides empathy for Shanelle.
That empathy results in Shanelle’s sentence being stayed, and in that episode, Isabella finds out she’ll be getting released as well. Talk about choosing to wrap that storyline up after she told Corey she wanted a new lawyer?
We kind of linked Shanelle and Isabella together, so I wanted Corey to have the victory. He had to deal with his father, finally let go of the guilt that he felt of Isabella being in jail, so I wanted that happy ending for him, too. And the first scene we see of him is having sex with this woman and kicking her out, and then the last thing we see of him is opening a car door and taking a woman out on a date. So I wanted to show his arc, and I was really excited about seeing him actually bond with Dr. Michaels [Essence Atkins].
Do you see a future for Corey Cash in Reasonable Doubt?
Right now, I don’t know. First of all, Morris is amazing, not just on screen but working with him. He’s also booked and busy. He has a whole other show that he’s the lead in, so I was happy to have him in the little window that I could have him.
There was very much a will they-won’t they element to Corey’s relationship with Jax in the first half of the season. What ultimately made you decide not to have them cross the line?
I really wanted to show the growth in Jax. I’ve seen tweets that say, “Season one Jax would have had him,” and I’m like, “Absolutely, without a doubt, that is what would have happened.” But I put this in the script that you see these flashes of mistakes, and our editor did an incredible job of linking the Damon character (Michael Ealy) and Lewis, and picking these clips that really, really worked.
I wrote in it that you hear the therapist’s voice say, “you hurt me, I hurt you,” to stop this cycle. This is why they went to therapy, to show that she is healed. So if she sleeps with Corey, what does that do? That doesn’t make her feel better. That doesn’t make the baby not come. All it does is hurt him, and it’s the same cycle that they were in. So I wanted to show that she’s now making better decisions, that she’s not making decisions based on impulse. And I think if there’s any test to show growth, it’s Morris Chestnut behind you, touching you and you leave the room.
Ultimately, I really do want this show to be about Jax and Lewis healing. They go through ups and downs and in the finale, there’s a loss that they experience. But I really want the series to show this couple has been messy, has tried to hurt each other. But at the end of the day, they do love each other, and they both are good people, and they have fun together and there’s passion. They have a lot of things that a lot of people don’t have with each other. So if they could really be their best versions of themselves, what could that relationship be?
Some audience reactions suggest Jax staying with Lewis while he’s having a break baby signifies the type of ride-or-die struggle love Black women in real-life are resisting.
It’s interesting to me, and I’ve seen both sides of this, because [other] people are like, “Wait a minute, what about Damon?” So, people have short memories. He could have killed [Jax], and if Lewis had to try to figure out where she was and the cops weren’t coming, who knows what that ending could have been. So Jax was very reckless. She fell in love with somebody else. And to his point, she was like, “When did [sleeping with Toni] start?” And he’s like, “When I saw you with, ol’ boy.” So that’s part of the hurt. I’m hoping when people watch the finale and they see her talk with Damon, they really do feel the healing, that they understand that she does feel guilty, which is part of why she’s staying, but you also see in episodes nine and 10, and even at the end of eight, her struggle with, “Yes, I’ve decided to stay,” but it’s a choice she has to make every day. She has to bite her tongue not to say stuff and try to figure this out, and that was important to me too.
I’m hoping that people don’t compare this to some dude who cheats on a woman who has done nothing wrong versus a complicated separation. Shit happens and I think we all have to make choices about what we want in our own lives. And I’m sure people [watching] have made choices that they wouldn’t want to be seen on television. I want to show healthy reactions to the things that happen versus bad behavior.
In the finale, we see that Toni loses the baby and is suing Jax and Lewis for his death. What are the legal grounds for that and what larger issues might get explored in a season three?
You can sue someone for emotional distress, it doesn’t mean it necessarily holds up. But I knew that was going to be the ending. So throughout the season there are moments where Toni is like, “I don’t want you involved,” so for her, she feels like, “I already had to deal with the loss of this.” I think what really her hurt is that she thought Lewis and her would still have a bond, and obviously there’s no more bond, so part of me feels like Toni’s act is to still stay connected, and that she can’t accept that they go on and live their life, and she is sad and with nothing. It’s a vengeful act. It’s also like, “I wanted to do this on my own. I didn’t ask you guys to be involved, and you kept pushing and pushing,” so she has a point, from her perspective, in addition to being [a witness] in the trial and exposing her business. I feel like she wants someone to pay for what happened to her in the last few months.
Have you heard any word on a season three?
They definitely are happy with the way the show is performing, and it’s doing well and people are really excited about it so that makes me very happy. I’m hoping that I hear something before the end of the year either way. The most important thing is that people keep watching, keep telling their friends. Black content is important, whatever kind of show it is. Because we all relate to these shows differently. I remember when Power premiered on Starz, and it was like, “Oh, I’m into this.” It was fun to see us. It’s great to see Black actors really shine. I’m glad Bel-Air is doing well, so I hope that people are committed to Black content and continuing the shows that people are people are talking about.
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Reasonable Doubt season two is now streaming all episodes on Hulu.
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