Perry Mason's Paul Raci Reveals Major Scenes Between Brooks And Lydell Were Added Mid-Shoot [Exclusive]
This post contains major spoilers for "Perry Mason" season 2.
As season 2 of HBO's "Perry Mason" comes to a close, the final pieces of the increasingly complex puzzle are coming together. With this second run of episodes, new showrunners Jack Amiel and Michael Begler have turned the series from an unrelentingly gloomy affair into a compelling glimpse beneath the surface of 1930s Los Angeles that, much like the court cases Matthew Rhys' Mason conducts so deftly, brings the truth of the era to light. While the production design and lighting beautifully convey the vibrant and often glamorous veneer of the setting, there is plenty of skullduggery and moral decay lurking below the surface.
Much of that is showcased in the stories of Mason's co-counsel Della Street and his lead investigator Paul Drake, who have been given a lot more to do this season. And as a result, they've come face to face with LA's dark side in startling and often disturbing fashion, with Drake seemingly on the edge of a complete breakdown — having compromised his own sense of justice and morality multiple times (an exciting emotional arc to portray for actor Chris Chalk). But there are also plenty of disturbing events that take place in the sordid lives of Lydell McCutcheon (Paul Raci) and his son, Brooks (Tommy Dewey), whose murder forms the basis of the court case at the center of this season.
Seeing the unscrupulousness of the McCutcheon family slowly revealed across the course of seven episodes has been at once shocking and satisfying, as disturbing truths about the dynasty's machinations are brought to light. But according to Raci, much of that scandalous backstory almost didn't make it into the show.
The writers added scenes mid-shoot
"Perry Mason" season 2's court case revolves around two brothers, Mateo (Peter Mendoza) and Rafael (Fabrizio Guido) Gallardo, who are arrested and charged with murdering Brooks McCutcheon. But as Mason and we all clocked from the start, there's much more to the death of this business magnate than meets the eye. Much of this has to do with his father, Lydell, who throughout the season appears to be concealing a deeply sinister side and potentially having something to do with paying the Gallardos to kill his own son.
In episode 6 and 7, the full extent of Lydell's illegal oil smuggling scheme is revealed, along with how Brooks' own illicit activities indirectly threatened that scheme. For a while, it seems Lydell may have had his own flesh and blood dispatched by paying for his assassination. But by the end of episode 7, it's heavily suggested that the real culprit is Hope Davis's Camilla Nygaard — a former business partner of Lydell's who ordered the hit on Brooks before he could blow the oil smuggling operation.
It's a narrative that's full of twists and turns, which are made even more effective by flashback sequences showing the rocky relationship between Brooks and his father. /Film's Vanessa Armstrong spoke to Paul Raci, who explained how many of those scenes were actually added to partway through shooting the season. He explained:
"The very first scene that you see me in, in episode 1, when I'm talking to my son — when I call him over at the seaside resort — that wasn't filmed or written until about halfway into the shooting, when the showrunners realized that they didn't have enough between Lydell and Brooks, his son. So they actually wrote some more scenes for us in the middle of the filming."
Fleshing out the story
It seems the "Perry Mason" writers had severely underestimated how much backstory they needed to show for Brooks and Lydell McCutcheon, as it wasn't just one extra scene that was added at the last minute. Paul Raci shared that the scene in which Lydell tells his son to abscond to Cuba was also hastily added mid-shoot, adding that he and Brooks actor Tommy Dewey were "thrilled" to shoot more scenes:
"Me and Tommy, we said goodbye to each other weeks ago. And so you can imagine, anytime when they call you back to do another scene, we were both thrilled to be there. And when you got a happy actor that's thrilled to be there, we had the electricity."
The extra scenes certainly help to, as Raci put it, "flesh out the story" (which, with all its moving parts, often needs as much elucidation as it can get). In fact, it's kind of amazing the "Cuba" scene wasn't in the original script, as it shows how desperate Lydell was to keep Brooks from uncovering his oil scheme and really hammers home the idea that he could well be behind his son's murder. That is, before the final Camilla Nygaard reveal removes all doubt — or does it? With one episode still to go, we'll have to see what further twists await in the season finale.
The "Perry Mason" season 2 finale airs April 24, 2023, on HBO.