“When I was 15 or 16 years old, I heard Jay-Z’s album ‘Reasonable Doubt’ and it changed my life,” revealed Raamla Mohamed, showrunner and executive producer of the first scripted series from Onyx Collective, also titled Reasonable Doubt. The series’ writer was recently joined by the cast and creative team for a TCA press conference about the series, which launches on Wednesday, September 27th exclusively on Hulu. “The swagger that that album had, the confidence, to me represented the show that I wanted to do. And so that's why I decided to name the show Reasonable Doubt after his freshman album. And, of course, it’s a legal drama and she’s a defense attorney, so it was kind of a perfect fit.”
(Onyx Collective)
Raamla Mohamed cut her teeth in Hollywood on Shondaland projects, including Scandal, which is how she came to know executive producer Kerry Washington, who also directs the pilot episode. “Raamla’s a big part of the reason why I wanted to do this show,” Washington shared, having also worked with Raamla on Little Fires Everywhere. “Raamla and I have sort of grown up together in this business. She was a research assistant on Season 1 of Scandal and we kind of lived through that show together, and then Little Fires and now this. So Raamla and her big, bold, risk-taking, adventurous mind is the big draw. But also the woman who inspired the show, Shawn Holley, is really, really special and dynamic. And when I met her, I really got so excited about working on a show that began to explore some of the complexities of her work and her life. I knew it would be really challenging to find somebody who could play this character as written by Raamla, but Emayatzy solved that problem for us and it was a no-brainer.”
“One of my favorite things about Jax is that she has all of these different circles that she’s in,” Emayatzy Corinealdi said about her character Jax Stewart, an L.A. defense attorney. “She keeps some of them pretty separate, but you get to see her live her life in a way that’s not particularly all together, and that’s my favorite part because that’s life. [Raamla] wrote a woman who is capable of trying to figure all of these things out, and being willing, and having the courage to fail at it at the same time. And that’s what I like seeing on television, and I don’t think we have a lot of that. So the hybrid of this woman and her two worlds, it's my absolute favorite part of the show.” It was also a treat for Emayatzy to work with Kerry Washington as a director and producer. “To have her on the other side directing and being able to work with her in that capacity was so much fun and such a treat. You know, she has all of the skills that we have as actors, but then you take that and you have it in the director and she’s aware, she knows what the scene needs in that moment without having to speak it. There’s that language that’s already there.”
(Ser Baffo/Hulu) –
Reasonable Doubt contains a lot of on-screen drama, but behind the scenes, it’s a welcoming and inclusive environment that instills trust in the cast to be bold. “The idea of Onyx Collective excited me and at every single turn I had to forfeit my trust and I was given confidence and courage to not get in my own way when it came to the comedy,” explained Tim Jo, who plays Daniel, one of Jax’s colleagues. As an Asian-American actor, Tim was used to trying to work around potentially insensitive jokes on other shows. He didn’t experience that here, and was repeatedly encouraged to adlib his own lines and punch-up his own dialogue..
“Kerry Washington said to me, ‘You know what? Your character’s the one I would want to play,’” gushed Angela Grovey, who completes Jax’s workplace trio of close confidants. “I enjoyed exploring what support looked like in Jax’s life because I work with her, but there is a sisterhood. She supports her. So I have found a lot of joy finding what support looks like in my role and in my space, and I think we got some beautiful things out of it.”
There are beautiful moments in the narrative of Reasonable Doubt, but with a television veteran like Larry Wilmore, who has spent four decades in the industry, the changes behind the scenes was the real sight to behold. “Let me try to explain what the excitement felt like,” he began. “You get on the set, ‘Oh, who’s the star of the show?’ ‘Black woman.’ ‘Oh, that’s good. Well, who’s directing?’ ‘Black woman.’ ‘Oh, great. Who’s show-running?’ ‘Black woman.’ ‘Oh, wow.’ ‘Who’s the director of photography?’ ‘Black woman.’ ‘Oh, wow. Well, who’s the head of the studio watching all this?’ ‘Black woman.’ ‘Wait! What’s going on here? This has never happened before! This is amazing!’”
It is amazing. Onyx Collective’s first scripted drama, Reasonable Doubt, premieres Tuesday, September 27th, on Hulu.