Write On: 'Matlock' Creator & Showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman

“The most important thing that I've learned as a storyteller is
that I have to treat every character in the show as though
they're the lead in the show, and they are never doing anything
so that I can prompt a move from another character. They are
doing things that are true to what they want and their
motivation. So that's what makes that architecture hard, because
you know you want things to happen, but they have to happen
coming out of character, not coming out of what the room wants to
see happen. So it's like the merging of those two. We know what
architecture we want, but if it doesn't feel true to the
character, the character wouldn't do it. Every time, you’ve got
to say no, even though it's tempting, because that is who you
have to protect – your characters,” says Jennie Snyder Urman,
creator and showrunner of Matlock, about creating story
architecture in a series. 


On today’s episode, we talk with Jennie Snyder Urman, who created
the reboot of Matlock starring Kathy Bates as Madeline Matlock.
We chat about reinventing the beloved character once played by
Andy Griffith, the joy of building a show around an older female
lawyer and the generational changes in social attitudes women
experience, and the sacrifices women often make when it comes to
sexual harassment, including Matty herself.
 


“[Matty] realizes now, coming back [to the legal profession],
what it cost her. And it's not like every day she was thinking
about it. It was just, ‘Oh my gosh, I made these changes to avoid
this. And why do I have to make these changes? Why didn't that
person make the changes so I could be in the space where I was
comfortable?’ And I think what's so exciting about Maddie is that
she's still learning new things at 75. I think there’s also a
little bit of a wish fulfillment, that you can still evolve, and
you still learn, and you still feel new things,” says
Urman. 


To hear more about Matlock, what we can expect from season 2, and
Urman’s advice for writers, listen to the podcast.