‘Presumed Innocent’ Season 2 Focuses on ‘Juicy Plot’ and ‘Delicious’ New Characters, David E. Kelley Says

David E. Kelley has always been fascinated by the law.

His best-known works, from “L.A. Law” to “The Practice” to “Boston Legal” to “Ally McBeal,” are all set in the legal world; the genre has become his bread and butter. “I don’t always want to [stay within that space] — I like to be somewhat diverse with my offerings — but I do have a fascination and maybe proclivity still for law,” Kelley said. He studied it at Boston University, graduating with a degree in 1983, and was a practicing attorney for a brief period before Hollywood called. “I always felt that the law was our best means, flawed as it is, of legislating human morality and ethics. Most of my shows, when we do them at their best, we’re mining the core ethics of the characters.” 

Enter “Presumed Innocent,” the eight-part miniseries inspired by Scott Turow’s 1987 novel (which was first turned into a 1990 Harrison Ford movie) that was Apple TV+’s most-watched drama when it premiered last June. “I liked the movie a lot, but doing a miniseries allowed us to go into the book in more detail, so I don’t even look at it as a redo or a reboot so much as something original but in long-form,” Kelley, an 11-time Emmy winner and the recipient of the 2024 International Emmy Founders Award, said of the project. 

Kelley treated Turow’s book like his creative North Star, even though the miniseries eventually veers off in its own surprising direction. A rich character study disguised as an unpredictable legal thriller, the show follows seasoned prosecutor Rusty Sabich (Jake Gyllenhaal), a not-entirely-likable lead who unwittingly becomes the main suspect in the violent murder of a colleague (Renate Reinsve) with whom he was having an affair. Things blow wide open once Rusty’s house of cards begins falling as the trial threatens his career, his marriage and his family. 

“To take a lead character who you don’t approve of, who you may not even like but come to feel for, that’s a real challenge,” Kelley said. “We were lucky to get Jake, and he embraced that complexity. A lot of actors really only want to sign on for things where their characters are lovable and huggable. This guy could be that but was also contemptible in certain scenes. To be able to cultivate an investment in such a character, that’s a writer’s opportunity and sometimes dream.” 

It was a constant balancing act to make sure that Rusty, who makes one ill-advised decision after another, did not become unforgivable and irredeemable. “He’s a flawed person, and sometimes a bad guy, a bad father and a bad husband, but he’s a compelling character who you don’t want the audience to be able to turn away from,” Kelley said.

He credited Ruth Negga’s heart-wrenching portrayal of Rusty’s wife, Barbara — the “emotional heart and soul of the whole miniseries” — for giving “the audience permission to stick with Rusty when they might not otherwise have done so.” 

One of Kelley’s favorite scenes of the series was the closing argument in Rusty’s court case, something he’s perfected through years of scripting legal dramas. “I like a closing argument,” he said with a chuckle, who admitted his process is “a little schizophrenic” when he puts pen to paper for those lengthy monologues. “The trick is believing it when you write it. It was Robert Frost [who said], ‘No tears [in] the writer, no tears [in] the reader.’ You got to feel it yourself in order to expect your constituency to. That’s what we get inside the walls of these characters and write them from the inside out.”

“There’s no question Rusty felt he deserved to be acquitted of this crime,” Kelley noted. “And by the way, this is a guy who can compartmentalize anything, but he knew he was innocent. He came at this closing argument with the primal conviction that he should be set free. That’s the way Jake delivered it.”

Maintaining an element of surprise as Rusty’s murder case reaches its climactic end presented its own difficulties, because it forced Kelley to justify the existence of key scenes without resorting to his “biggest peeve”: red herrings.

“I see other series do it and I have to pace around the sofa a few times,” he said. “They’re not true to the characters. They’re not true to the story. The scene is there to wink-yank the audience so they don’t figure out the ending, and that’s a cheat in my opinion. I think what we took most pride in this series is if you go back and watch it a second time, everybody’s playing the truth with their respective scenes.” 

“Presumed Innocent” was not originally intended to continue past one season (don’t worry, the killer is revealed in the final episode), but its success with viewers led to a quick Season 2 renewal.

“There was no thinking of taking the show to year two. We didn’t really see, creatively, a path going forward with this particular franchise that wouldn’t feel derivative,” Kelley said. The more he thought about what a follow-up installment could entail, the clearer it became that Rusty Sabich’s story had reached its completion. 

So Season 2 takes an anthology approach, à la “Fargo” and “True Detective,” with no intention of carrying over characters from the first season. Kelley promises the upcoming installment revolves around “a juicy plot,” a fresh case and a new cast of “really delicious characters” inspired by Jo Murray’s debut novel, “Dissection of a Murder,” set to be published in spring 2026. “The themes that were there in the first season of fidelity, betrayal, murder, love and passion, that stuff is pretty timeless,” he said, hinting that they will be “front and center” in the follow-up.

“It’s always the genesis of any series or show: Why does this beast deserve to live?” Kelley said. “And for me, answering that ‘why?’ question is story and the character. Is the story compelling enough that it’s going to draw you in and are the characters complex and rich enough that you’re going to invest?”

A fall production start is being eyed. At the time of the interview, two episodes had already been written.

“We do recognize that one of the byproducts of the success of the first season is the burden [of living up to it],” Kelley said. “It’s either go big and go strong or go home. But we’re satisfied at this point. We’ve got something good that’ll live up to the bar set by Season 1.” 

A version of this story first ran in the Limited Series & TV Movies issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. 

Read more from the Limited Series & TV Movies issue here.

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