Set in Los Angeles in the 1930s, Perry Mason is HBO's take on Erie Stanley Gardner's iconic detective stories. The series stars Matthew Rhys as the titular private investigator who spent the first season investigating the mysterious circumstances of a young boy's kidnapping. Perry Mason was developed by Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald who will not be returning for Season 2.
In a recent interview with Collider's Christina Radish for Gaslit, Shea Whigham shared that they are "about halfway through the second season," which is being showrun by Jack Amiel and Michael Begler. While Whigham wasn't able to reveal much about the upcoming season he did tell us:
"We're in '33 in Perry Mason. Perry is in the soup again, and he's gotta try to figure his way out. Hopefully, Strickland can help him navigate that."
As fans will remember, in addition to trying to help solve the disappearance of Charlie Dodson, Perry was in a pretty dark place that he was trying to get out of. He and his wife Linda (Gretchen Mol) had separated due to Mason's degrading mental health, and he wasn't able to see his son Theodore, who was on his mind because of the case he was working on. Based on Whigham's comments, it sounds like the ghosts of World War I are still ever-present in Mason's life, preventing him from moving forward. With the series moving into 1933, as Whigham confirms, it will be interesting to see if the end of prohibition is what sends Mason back "in the soup." His drinking problem was, after all, a contributing part to his separation from Linda and his go-to coping mechanism for his PTSD.
At the end of the first season, Pete Strickland's partnership with Mason came to an abrupt end after Perry lashed out after they lost track of Elder Seidel (Taylor Nichols). While it was sad to see Pete leave to work for Hamilton Burger (Justin Kirk), no one could blame him for wanting to put space between him and Perry. Though it sounds like he's not entirely out of the picture in Season 2, which is a relief. Perry may have the beat cop Paul Drake (Chris Chalk) as his new partner, but he's no Pete.
Whigham also shared that he loves "telling period pieces" and expanded on that sentiment later on in the interview saying, "It's interesting, you can shoot the hell out of the thing, and it's fun, and it's exquisite to look at, but that doesn't hold you. If you don't have the story, and you don't have an A-plus cast. And likewise, you can have an A-plus cast, but if it doesn't feel authentic and visceral, then it won't hold you. I think what you're saying is, viscerally, you see Perry Mason and you're in that time."
He also credited Perry Mason's director Tim Van Patten with being able to make Los Angeles look like an entirely different city: "That's my guy, Tim Van Patten, who did a year's worth of research to try to unlock places that, even if you're from [Los Angeles], you've never seen on film before. All of that is Tim." There's no doubt that Van Patten and the team behind the series have been able to create a Los Angeles that feels torn straight out of the pages of 1930s history books.
Look for more from our exclusive interview with Shea Whigham soon.