“Doubt” premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday evening on CBS, starring Katherine Heigl as attorney Sadie Ellis who starts to fall for her charismatic client Billy Brennan (Steven Pasquale), a pediatric surgeon recently accused of murdering his girlfriend 24 years ago.
The series was created by the husband and wife team of Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, who spent 10 seasons as writers and producers on the series that first brought Heigl fame, the ABC medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy.”
“As it does in every television writer’s life, when they come to you and they say, `All right. It’s time to create your own show,’ the first thing we thought was, `Please, God, no more medicine,”‘ Phelan said at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour.
“We’ve always been intrigued by the law. We feel like since 9/11 there have been a lot of shows about catching bad guys … and we wanted to kind of tell the story from a different perspective, tell the story of criminal defense attorneys.”
Rater told City News Service she and her husband “wanted to make a show with life and death stakes.”
“There’s life and death stakes in defending people who may go away to prison for the rest of their lives,” Rater said.
Rater said she and her husband “were just fascinated with the idea of falling in love with your client. It’s just an idea that came to us and we wanted to explore it.”
Phelan described “Doubt” as “a procedural that also has personal elements in it,” “a show that’s going to explore some really exciting issues” and is “also a lot of fun” with “a lot of laughs and sex appeal.”
Ellis’ defense of Brennan will be dealt with throughout the 13-episode season. Each episode will also include one or two closed-ended cases, Phelan said.
“We’re going to do ripped from the headlines cases,” Rater said. “We’re going to do a story that deals with the rape culture on college campuses. But we’re also going to do light, funny stories. We have a case that deals with dog poop.”
The series is Heigl’s second since leaving the long-running ABC medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” in 2010. Her first, the NBC spy drama “State of Affairs,” ran for 13 episodes during the 2014-15 season.
“First and foremost what got my attention was Tony and Joan `cause I’ve worked with them before and I know how talented and smart and funny and amazing their work is,” Heigl said in a conference call last week
“When I read the pilot I was just so blown away by the premise, by the character and by their overall story outline for the season. It’s one of the best I’ve every heard of.”
The cast also includes Emmy nominee Laverne Cox who adds to her extensive list of pioneering accomplishments by becoming the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on broadcast television, Ivy League- educated attorney Cameron Wirth.
“Doubt” will include a case about a hate crime against a transgender person.
“One of the things we deal with is does it make sense for Cameron to defend this woman?” said Phelan, whose son Tom is transgender. “Is it going to be a distraction? Is it better for somebody else in the firm to defend this woman?
The other thing that we’re very proud of in terms of her character, is her character has an ongoing love story that happens through the 13 episodes. This love story is something that people haven’t seen before and is fun and sexy and funny and touching and all the things a great love” story is.
Other cast members include Dreama Walker as second-year associate Tiffany Simon, who is learning from Wirth; “The West Wing” alumnus Dule Hill as a close friend and colleague of Ellis; Kobi Libii as Nick Brady, who earned his law degree while serving a prison sentence; and Elliott Gould as Isaiah Roth, the revered legal lion and “lefty” legend who heads the boutique law firm.
“Coming from the mentality of `Grey’s Anatomy,’ we’re interested and invested in telling real stories for each character in each episode,” Phelan said.
“Everybody has something to do in every episode. Because our experience on that show is people have their favorites and everybody likes to see their favorite character in the episode and find out what they’re doing so we want to service that.”
—City News Service