Perry Mason airs on HBO on Mondays, but it’s got the soul of a prestige Sunday series. A gritty reboot of the ‘50s and ‘60s TV series, it stars Matthew Rhys as the haunted titular lawyer living in a 1930s Los Angeles drenched in immaculate noir vibes.
In season two, Perry takes on the case of two Mexican kids accused of murder. It’s a storyline that allows the show to drill down on its core themes—corruption, class disparity, an inept justice system—to even greater effect than the solid but sluggish first season. We also get to more fleshed out arcs for the supporting cast, a deep bench that includes Juliet Rylance, Shea Whigham and Chris Chalk as his investigator Paul Drake, a Black former cop often forced to navigate working for a system built to keep him out.
Paul starts the season on the outs with Perry, but hard times and a juicy case brings the two back together again. Chalk is a magnetic character actor with TV credits including Homeland, to When They See Us, and The Newsroom. In Perry Mason, he brings much-needed gravitas to a role capturing the anxiety many African-Americans experienced at the time, including those in law enforcement. GQ talked to Chalk about where Paul Drake is headed, growing up as a theater kid, and being a reader at Philip Seymour Hoffman’s theater company.
When you read the scripts for this season, how did you feel about the storyline being centered more around your character and the Mexican side of 1930s Los Angeles?
First, I was interested to see: does Paul care about Mexicans? Because it ain’t 2023, we are not sharing each other’s problems. But I think throughout the story, Paul realizes, it’s the same shit. They’re going through the same thing I’m going through. But I think that’s a discovery for Paul more so than something he knew. So I was excited to take Paul through that journey. Then I was excited to see more of Paul’s family life and that he’s leaning so heavily on [his wife] Clara’s side of their family who don’t really—they respect him, but they don’t love him.
Your character is interesting because it’s 1930s Los Angeles. You’re Black, you’re a cop…
People often ask, “Is it hard to play Paul?” And I’m like, “Yo, are you aware of the way the world is today?” All I have to do is remember that there’s less that I can say and a higher chance of dying. Well, I can’t even say a higher chance of dying. A higher chance of no one giving a shit that I died.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
That’s maybe the most depressing quality about doing Perry Mason is realizing, the same things are happening by the same people and the same audience is watching and we seem to be crippled and unable to shift out of this monotony. And I think that’s why shows like this are important because hopefully we’ll see it and go, “We’re still doing this? Time to grow up, guys.” So as Paul continues to evolve, I think he’ll decide his own relationship with what’s more important. I mean, that’s a theme of this season, his family. So who is Paul going to consider his family and when is he going to take a not safe action? He tends to take these very—in the first season in particular—he took very safe actions up until he met Perry. His whole life has been, “I’m going to be a good dude. I still love my community, but I’m going to get some white favor.”
In that first season, he was kind of stuck in the middle as a Black cop. He’s viewed as a Tom.
Yeah. He’s not at his core. He knows why he is doing it. He’s a cop because he still ain’t got no power. The gangs ain’t formed in the same way. He’s still just a Black dude who’s a cop. And his intention was to help the community. I even feel like though he wasn’t in the scripts, Perkins existed in the first season and Paul didn’t mess with him because Perkins is like the godfather of Harlem. He’s doing some dirt, but he’s also doing so much good that you leave a guy like Perkins alone. But now in this new season when he’s vacillating between Perkin’s side of justice and the Perry Mason side of justice and the DA’s side of justice, Paul has his head on a swivel.
I feel like Paul and Perry are the same kind of person. They’re very idealistic and what’s right is important to them.
Man, I think that’s one of the most annoying things for Paul about having met Perry. He was so good. He was like, “I’m good. I don’t care about justice.” He wasn’t a cop to save the world. He was a cop to be safe and then Perry starts putting into his head like, “Hey, you can live like that, or you can help people.” And I’m sure that it’s been nagging at Paul his whole life. I’m going to really do something with this position, but I’m scared. And then he gets this false confidence, maybe not false confidence, but a very scary confidence from Perry. And now it’s too late. He can’t go back.
One of the last scenes of episode five is when Paul is in bed with his wife, and he’s asking her, if he’s a good person?
Paul is really trying to stay on the side of, like you said, this kind of idealism. But that’s starting to crumble. What is this idealism? Why can Perry navigate the world and be a little messy, be drunk, going to work, get a law degree in 15 minutes? You know what I mean? He’s starting to see the DA’s corruption. Perkins is flirting with good and bad. Moe, his brother-in-law, is putting awful pressure on him. There’s a moment where Paul shows some vulnerability and comes to Moe to help with some information.
The relationship between Paul and his brother-in-law touches on an interesting masculinity aspect of those days. In the beginning, Paul isn’t working and his family’s taking care of him, but then as you get to episode five, now Moe isn’t working and Paul is seeing his private eye career taking off.
I like that within the season when you get to see a little confidence switch, especially because the guy that plays Moe is a big boy. I mean, I’m a strong 5’9, but that boy towers over me and he could wrap me up pretty easily.
And he’s blue collar.
Which is what we identify masculinity with and he starts off providing for all of us, a whole family. And then to have Paul switch that with his brain, I think it triggers Moe. Paul’s walking around with a different swagger. Not on purpose, but he was down and now he’s back. I’ve had this in my own family because I am the littlest in my family too. And I’m the most sensitive. And maybe though I do Jujitsu I’m still probably the softest and there’s often conversations of, “Yeah, but you do art.”
You’re a theater kid.
And they love it and they respect it and they’re big fans, but still like, “Man, look at your hands. They ain’t got no calluses on them.” They don’t, girl, I get manicures. [Laughs] If Paul didn’t have his brain, he probably wouldn’t be alive because he’s almost useless physically.
You were a reader at the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York. Were you able to work with Philip Seymour Hoffman?
I babysat his kids a couple times. I was a reader for a couple shows that he did. I’ll tell this story as quickly as I can. I was a reader for Our Lady of 121st Street and I was going in to be the understudy of Russell G. Jones and Ron Cephas Jones. And I did this audition and Phil said, “That was brilliant, Chris. I was just doing this as a favor, but now I really got to think about this.” Man, that was absolutely amazing. I mean, Phil is great, but he ain’t the end all be all. There were some bad people at LAByrinth. Not even just actors, like producers, writers. To be exposed to that, coming from where I came from, which is a primarily white education, I didn’t know anything about LAByrinth until I got there. And this girl I was dating, thank God for her. She hands me to them. I’d love to say I did it myself, but I was shell shocked when I got to New York.
I brought Phil up because he came up as a secondary actor in the beginning that stole scenes, and you often steal scenes, so I wanted to draw that line.
Let’s go! Let’s go, baby, I love it! Let’s say it. It’s so hard to talk about theater and film and not get comparative, but I will say this, in my specific journey through New York and the way I like to do stuff is I’m a nerd. I love building character. I love being specific. I love being messy and then throwing it all away. And that was kind of a whole company idea. That’s what I took from those people. Phil in particular, you do the work, whether you got one line, no lines, or you’re the lead of the movie. You do the work.