Why Did Josh Lucas Want to Do The Firm?

With movies and TV both looking for recognizable once-popular properties to reboot or remodel (films, shows, games, candy, etc), NBC has gone the John Grisham-route with The Firm, a new legal thriller series starring Josh Lucas in the Mitch McDeere role that Tom Cruise played back in the 1993 movie.

But this is no remake. No, this tale is a continuation of the novel/movie and finds Mitch and his family emerging, after 10 years, from federal witness protection to find themselves in all new kinds of danger. Which definitely begs the question: Why continue the story at all? And: Is it too much of a stretch to buy that Mitch can get caught up in another corrupt law firm?

At the Television Critics Association Press Tour, the EP and cast (including Josh Lucas, Molly Parker, Juliette Lewis and Callum Keith Rennie) were on hand to answer questions such as those. EP Lukas Reiter is, in fact, hyper-sensitive to everyone's concerns about the "John McClane" factor of the same guy finding himself in the same type of over-the-top situation. "The second episode is totally shocking, but they actually the firm kills me and Juliette Lewis takes over as lead counsel." Lucas joked. Reiter then spoke to the fact that it would have to be a great story to bring an audience back into the world of these characters and that "from the beginning we really tried to take to heart that thought that people might have and make sure that we were keeping Mitch as smart and resourceful and intelligent about those issues as he could be. So you'll notice he doesn't charge headlong into a firm in this series, actually. He's very reticent about that, and he actually makes the decision to create an association with that firm. And to some extent the fun of the show is watching Mitch get into a situation and then watching to see how he gets out of it."

"I always wondered 'why didn't John Grisham ever continue this story?'" Reiter continued. "They were such successful characters and it was such a successful story early on. " When Reiter came up with the idea of the McDeere family trying to reclaim their lives after a decade in witness protection he thought "this was an interesting way in." And when he eventually talked to Grisham, the author was "in from the very beginning."

Lucas himself then talked about why he chose to do a TV series after being seen in movies for so long. Lucas said that most movie studios were simply not in the business of supporting specific artistic visions and that "television is a platform for people to get out some absolutely fascinating work. Also, simply put it was John Grisham. Everyone is moving to television right now. I put Grisham up there as being in the populous zeitgeist in a huge way. It was 'possibly thrilling' television. I hadn't seen a John Grisham thriller on TV yet."

Lucas then went on to say that he felt it was his responsibility to pay homage to Cruise's performance from the movie, especially in the small details. Lucas then brought up a scene from the movie when Cruise was making illegal copies at his firm at the Xerox machine and the fact that he had a small shaving cut on his neck, displaying how nervous he had been before coming into work. "And to me, it's about making those little moments that hopefully, maybe someday, somewhere down the series, you'll see that, and someone goes, 'Oh, that's a direct connection to the movie.' Otherwise, I felt really like this is 10 years later, and these are very different people. Honestly, they're much more damaged. They've been through a very, very rough time. At the beginning of the movie and the book, there's a sense of naivete and drive and ambition that I think is very different now. It's very much survival and fear and paranoia, and the lifestyle that I think happens after 10 years of being on the run is so damaging. So hopefully, there's a lot more of an adult complexity to the family at this point ."

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The Firm's two-hour premiere airs on Sunday, January 8th at 9/8c.

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