Christopher Gorham is going on trial in the upcoming Lincoln Lawyer. Based on author Michael Connelly’s best-selling The Brass Verdict, the second book in his Lincoln Lawyer series, the TV show follows Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), an idealistic lawyer who runs his practice out of a Lincoln Town Car. The narrative picks up with Mickey’s former law partner passing away and leaving Mickey with all of his firm’s cases. One of those legal actions involves Trevor Elliott (Christopher Gorham), a video game mogul accused of murdering his wife and her lover. Whether Trevor is innocent or guilty remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: they don’t know if they can trust one another, and that can lead to a messy case.
Gorham recently spoke with CBR about joining the David E. Kelley (The Practice, L.A. Law, Ally McBeal, Boston Legal) drama. He dove into portraying a suspected murderer, the series’ exposition-heavy scenes, voicing the Flash, and why Harper’s Island would thrive in 2022.
CBR: David E. Kelley certainly knows his way around a legal drama. What’s the appeal of courtroom productions for you?
Christopher Gorham: I had never really done one. Genre-wise, I was interested in it because it’s new to me. Next, I want to get the chance to play a lawyer. I think that would be fun. By the way, having served on a jury, TV courtrooms are so much more exciting. David E. Kelley’s involvement gives you some certainty that the production is going to be very high quality, and it certainly was. Ted Humphrey, who is the showrunner, comes from The Good Wife, which is an incredible show. He wrote a great script. I was very happy to be able to join this group.
The show adapts one of the books by author Michael Connelly. What made The Brass Verdict the perfect entry into the world of criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller?
What’s great about it is Mickey has been out of the game for a while. He’s had some personal problems that you find about in the first episode. It’s a starting over point. He’s trying to rebuild his practice. He’s slowly, gently thinking about rebuilding his family. So, it’s just a really good jumping-off point to re-meet this character. Lots of folks remember the Matthew McConaughey movie. This is an opportunity to restart the storytelling of Mickey Haller, and in a way that more closely follows the book. In the books, Mickey Haller is a Latino, and, in this show, they have hired a Latino, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, to play Mickey Haller.
Introduce us to your character Trevor Elliott and where he fits into the narrative.
Trevor Elliott is a very successful, well-known video game developer. In my mind, he’s like a Neil Druckmann-type of a guy. He’s kind of like an Elon Musk-type character. He’s very successful. He’s wildly known, and he’s been accused of murdering his wife and her lover. It’s a very high-profile case that doesn’t look all that complicated in the beginning, so he’s in big trouble. His lawyer, that he had hired to defend him at the very beginning of the first episode, gets killed. The lawyer leaves all of his cases to Mickey. The first episode, there’s a bit of a feeling out where Trevor is trying to decide if Mickey can handle this case, if he’s going to be able to defend him and save his life.
How would you describe Trevor’s relationship with Mickey? What kind of push-and-pull do they have as the series goes on?
It’s so much fun because they are not friends. Trust is being earned on both sides, all the way through the show. Trevor is very uncertain on whether or not Mickey can handle this case on such short notice. It’s very important to him that this case gets going. Trevor has been waiting four years to try and clear his name. For Mickey, he’s not sure he trusts Trevor. It looks really bad, and Trevor is a successful dude. He’s pretty full of himself and very confident. He has a lot of ideas about how he should be defended. The relationship is pretty contentious.
How paramount was it to keep things ambiguous, to keep audiences and Mickey guessing whether Trevor was innocent or guilty?
That’s the whole story. That’s the fun of this case. You start in a place where Trevor looks guilty. Everybody knows the statistics. When a spouse is murdered, it’s usually the other spouse. The fun of the story is as you get to know Trevor and you get to know more of these details, it gets complicated. Not only does it give Mickey a way to credibly defend his client, but it keeps the audience guessing what they think of this guy. For his obvious faults, Trevor loves his wife. In that truism, things can get pretty complicated pretty quickly.
What’s the secret to keeping dialogue-heavy or legal jargon scenes interesting?
Having them written well is the biggest secret. Beyond that, for the actor, it becomes a matter of believing what you are talking about and understanding why it is important for this information to be conveyed. If there is an emotional connection to this stuff, then that can really ground any dialogue. We were talking about Covert Affairs earlier, and it had a lot of exposition in those episodes. Ted and his writing staff did a great job of writing that material with emotional urgency.
Looking at some of your other projects, what’s been fun about voicing the Flash in multiple DC animated features?
The obvious thing for superhero geeks like me, who grew up loving comic books and watching Justice League cartoons when I was a kid… It was a real treat to be asked to come and be part of that world. It was always fun to go in and do those movies. I think we ended up doing eight of them.
Your Lincoln Lawyer co-star, Neve Campbell, is coming off the latest Scream blockbuster. You are no stranger to horror, either. Looking back at Harper’s Island, how much did they tell you when you signed on? Did you know who the killer was?
It was interesting. They didn’t want to tell anybody. They asked us at the very first table read if any of us felt like we needed to know whether or not we were the killer, then they would tell us. Everybody said no at first, but I think Elaine Cassidy then decided later that she did need to know, so they told her it wasn’t her, but they didn’t say who it was. I suspected it was me from the beginning. I didn’t know until Episode 8. Then they told me, and I had to keep it a secret from everybody else for the rest of the season, which we had five more after that.
Harper’s Island only received one season, but people still talk about it. In what way do you feel that show was ahead of its time?
That show would have really thrived in the streaming environment. It’s essentially a horror film spread out over 13 hours. The first 25 minutes of any horror film is the set-up. You are introducing all the characters. You are introducing the location. Maybe the first murder happens. If you stretch that over 13 hours, that becomes the first four-and-a-half episodes, which on CBS translated into a month. It took a month to get past the exposition. It was too much for that audience at that time. I think that’s why it’s had a second life on streaming, because when you are able to sit down and binge it. It’s a more satisfying experience.
Catch The Lincoln Lawyer, streaming on Netflix May 13.
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