Fresh off his Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actor for The Americans, Matthew Rhys has landed his next TV role. Rhys will play the lead in Perry Mason, a new HBO limited series.
Rhys will play the classic character in the reboot, which tracks the unorthodox investigator/defense attorney’s origin story. Perry Mason is in the process of hiring a director and comes from Robert Downey Jr.’s production company, Team Downey, a company started with his wife Susan Downey.
The reimagined Perry Mason is set in 1932 Los Angeles and is based on characters created by Erle Stanley Gardner. The limited series follows the origins of American Fiction’s most legendary criminal defense lawyer, Perry Mason (Rhys). When the case of the decade breaks down his door, Mason’s relentless pursuit of the truth reveals a fractured city and just maybe, a pathway to redemption for himself.
The project was originally set up at HBO in 2016, with Nic Pizzolatto writing and Robert Downey Jr. attached to play the title character. Pizzolatto turned his attention to the third installment of his HBO series True Detective, with Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald stepping in as writers, and it also became clear, because of Downey’s feature commitments, that he would be unable to act in the series, so a search began for an actor to play the title character.
Matthew Rhys is an Emmy, Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice award winner for his portrayal of Philip Jennings on critically acclaimed FX drama series The Americans which recently wrapped its sixth and final season. He is also known for playing Kevin Walker for five seasons on ABC’s Brothers & Sisters.
