Skye P. Marshall is Olympia Lawrence in MATLOCK – Season 1 Key art | ©2024 CBS/Art Streiber

CBS’s freshman legal dramedy MATLOCK, adapted very loosely from the 1986-1995 series by showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman, airs Thursday nights and then streams on Paramount Plus. Kathy Bates plays the title character, elderly lawyer Maddie Matlock, who has just wrangled a job as a legal assistant at prestigious New York law firm Jacobson & Moore.

Except, as audiences found out at the end of the series premiere, Maddie Matlock is really Madeline Kingston, a wealthy lawyer who has really wrangled her way into Jacobson & Moore (and taken on a fake identity) to find out which one of its top lawyers defended the drug company responsible for her daughter’s fatal overdose, so that she can put the culprit in jail.

Maddie reports directly to firm junior partner Olympia, played by Skye P. Marshall. Olympia is both a devoted mother to her two children and a driven, take-no-prisoners courtroom warrior. She is separated from, but may be reuniting with, husband and fellow lawyer Julian (Jason Ritter), son of the firm’s managing co-partner Senior (Beau Bridges).

Chicago native Marshall, known for arcs on series including THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA and BLACK LIGHTNING, is a veteran of the United States Air Force. How did she transition from that to acting? Marshall explains this, and more, over the course of two conversations at the summer 2024 Television Critics Association press tour, one following the MATLOCK Q&A session, the other during a visit to the elaborate MATLOCK sets on the Paramount lot.

When Marshall left the Air Force, acting was not her first choice of new career. In fact, she says, “I avoided it like the plague, to be honest with you.”

Marshall elaborates that she did not begin acting until she was twenty-eight years old. “It took a really rough time working in corporate New York in the pharmaceutical market until I realized some of the disgusting ways that that industry moves when it comes to health and wellness, and I talked to my mom, and I said, ‘Mom, I worked so hard for this [career], and I’m here, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the rest of my life, but I know it’s not this.’ And she said to me, ‘That’s what you need to ask God for, for clarity.’ At the time, I didn’t have a relationship with God. I was a fan of His works, like the palm trees. But we didn’t have a relationship. And at that time, I would have believed in anything – that’s how unhappy I was. And I did. Every day, I was just like, ‘Whatever I’m supposed to do, just tell me. I won’t judge, I will do it.’”

Counsel came literally in the form of a dream. “I am not kidding you. It was clear as day. I had this dream, I woke up a couple of hours before my alarm clock, and it worked.” The dream was about, “L.A. and acting. And then it was everywhere. People were like, ‘Oh, you’re so funny, but you’re not an actor, you’re so dramatic, da-da-da.’ And I said, ‘You know what? Fine.’ Two months from that dream, I left New York, left the corporate world, came to L.A., and I still don’t have an agent. It literally has been off of faith, and teaming up with the right people.”

MATLOCK – Season 1 Key art | ©2024 CBS

Marshall does have early performing experience. “I grew up on stage, but I was always a part of the dance ensemble in theatre. And when I got [to Los Angeles], I didn’t know what a banana around the camera or what a martini shot was, because all I knew was stage, because I was a background dancer for six years. And someone told me, ‘It’s not about what you’re doing, it’s who you’re being.’ So, rather than walking around like I was just a background actor, in my thirties, I told myself, ‘No, this is a paid internship, and I’m getting work.’ And I did two seasons of CSI: NEW YORK as a background actor with Hill Harper, who had commonality with me, because he came from Harvard Law and ended up a waiter, and here I was, a background actor, after being a college grad and military veteran. He helped mentor me, in how to be a series regular.”

Starting a Hollywood acting career at age twenty-eight, Marshall opines, “is like coming in at thirty-five. Acting is like dog years, right? I think that’s what my own personal story has in common with Madeline Matlock. I was underestimated. People wanted to know what was my value, ‘What is your resume, what’s your formal training, what school did you go to?’ I went to the school of hard knocks, that’s where I went. I had life experience. I had a military background. I had heartbreak. I have a mother with dementia. I’ve gone through life. And for me, the most authentic way to go into an audition is to bring all of my trauma and my pain that I’ve never processed, and just hijack the characters that I was playing and leave it there on the floor. And my mind and my heart did not know that I was playing make-believe. It was a powerful wave of feeling. I just finally had to face it, and that has what has gotten me booked, job after job.”

The CBS network has consistently been supportive, Marshall says. “CBS was always there for me, from the beginning. Out of the fourteen years that I’ve been in the industry, CBS gave me my first guest star role, which was on THE MENTALIST, and my first pilot, directed by David Nutter, called THE ADVOCATES. And CBS gave me my first series regular, which was [2022’s] GOOD SAM.”

GOOD SAM had MATLOCK’s Urman as one of its executive producers, and introduced Marshall to fellow actor Edwin Hodge. The two married this summer.

Marshall relates, “CBS, they’re the matchmakers. I met Edwin at the final audition for GOOD SAM, and we got married, and I’m beside myself. So, now I’m married to a Fed. He’s on FBI: MOST WANTED. And so, we’re both living our dream, and having the most incredible time. Kathy was at my wedding. [MATLOCK costar] Leah Lewis sang at our wedding.”

Skye P. Marshall a in MATLOCK – Season 1 – “No, No Monsters” | ©2024 CBS / Sonja-Flemming

With MATLOCK, “CBS has given me my Cinderella story. I’ve been playing enough addicts, talking to mice, and so this is what this feels like, when I look out. Any time I’m doing a scene with Kathy, even if it requires me to be emotional, I literally just have to look at Kathy – ‘I’m acting with Kathy Bates’ – and that is enough for me to cry right on cue, ten times over. Am I still pinching myself? Absolutely, yes. But do I know that I deserve to be here? One thousand percent.

“I’ve always dreamt of working with someone like Kathy Bates. Even standing here, speaking to you,” Marshall laughs, “I was like, ‘What is happening?!’ So, I’m going through this – you [at the TCA] all are going through this with me, because this is all new and exciting, and I dreamt of having a role like Olympia. And so, to answer your question, standing right here after going through what I went through in the corporate world, this is my favorite place.” She taps the desk in Olympia’s aqua-hued office for emphasis.

To get to this place, Marshall explains, “I was scrolling through my phone, looking through the trades, and on DEADLINE, all I saw were three things – ‘MATLOCK, CBS, Kathy Bates.’ Immediately, I asked my manager for the script, I dived in, when I saw Olympia, I was like, ‘I have to play this character. I have to.’

“Now, while I may have worked with Jennie Snyder Urman before, this is Kathy Bates. Your relationship [with Urman] is not going to get you the job. You’re going to have to show up in an Old Hollywood way, do a chemistry read audition with Kathy, and she’s going to have a decision. And so, I made it to the final round, and I was flown out to do a chemistry read with Kathy Bates, and I was so nervous, I sweat through my first dress and had to put on another one.

MATLOCK – Season 1 Key art | ©2024 CBS

Then I did my chemistry read with her, and, just to feel like she was a human, I asked her, ‘Kathy, can I hug you?’ And she went like this,” Marshall opens her arms, “and then she started walking towards me, and we hugged. And then she was just like, ‘Are you ready to have some fun?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And that’s all we do. We have fun. She’s an incredible human being, she’s a master class of my craft, and she makes what we do easy.”

Something that Marshall doesn’t find easy, though, is when Olympia snaps at Bates’s Maddie. “Oh, I’ve gone to Jennie, and I’m like, ‘Who writes Olympia? Because I cannot be yelling at this old lady like this.’”

On the other hand, “It is acting, but I’m not going to lie – it’s really fun to square off with MISERY, because she gets some opportunities to clap back, and oh, my gosh, is it scary. My body was shivering for a while. Wait ‘til we get to that episode. It will blow your socks off.”

Marshall says she relates to her character “because Olympia is a daughter of a Marine, and I am an Air Force veteran. The military taught me how to process fear in the most sophisticated way. And that’s the scariest part of being an actor, is that moment before you walk into an audition, and that moment standing here speaking with all of you. It’s how to self-regulate through fear, and I believe that Olympia has to do that every single day, because the carpet can be swept out from under her, any given day.

“She’s trying to balance family, being a mother, becoming partner, while also doing good for people who cannot afford her services. But then she can make it rain financially from class action. She is very laser-beam-focused and ambitious; I share that same quality. She has this castle wall, but there’s always a crack in the castle wall, which I do have, and some people get in, and when they do, they see the softer side. There are a lot of qualities which Jennie knew already about me that, as she created and developed Olympia, I started noticing, ‘Oh, this is getting too easy to play.’”

The audience doesn’t yet know who is responsible for protecting the big pharma company that was instrumental in the death of Maddie’s daughter. Are the actors privy to what their characters did or didn’t do?

Marshall asserts, “One thing that makes Jennie Snyder Urman such a great showrunner and creator is, she hides our own secrets from us. And so, we are dying to know. We have no idea. We don’t know who is attached to what story drama. Once we get the script, that’s where we discover. And we’re not there yet.”

This isn’t tipping Marshall’s performance one way or the other. “When you don’t know, then you don’t play it. There’s no anticipation, you’re not leaving any breadcrumbs, because we genuinely don’t know.”

Related: MATLOCK: Actor Jason Ritter discusses the CBS reboot of the classic mystery series – Interview 

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Article: MATLOCK: Actress Skye P. Marshall gives the scoop on the new CBS reboot

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