From behind bars to the bar:

How wrongful imprisonment provided the spur for a law career.

New American legal drama For Life gives new meaning to the phrase ‘jailhouse lawyer’.

Nicholas Pinnock (above, Marcella, Criminal: UK) stars as Aaron Wallace, a former club owner wrongly convicted of drug trafficking. While serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole, he earns a licence to practise law and works to help his fellow inmates in court.

The series – already picked up for a second season – is inspired by the true story of Isaac Wright Jr, who was framed for selling drugs in 1991 and given a life sentence under New Jersey’s then-new drug kingpin law.

In prison, Wright earned a law degree and worked as a prison paralegal who won freedom or reduced sentences for more than 20 other inmates. He also proved his own innocence, was released after seven years inside, and now works as a lawyer in New Jersey.

For Life is the result of a chance meeting between Wright and the series executive producer Curtis Jackson, also known as rapper 50 Cent.

Wright thought his story would make a movie but the rapper-turned-actor-producer convinced him a television series was a better option.

“When he was describing his life story, it was so vivid and I was, like, ‘What the f*** is going on?’,” says Jackson, admitting he initially doubted that Wright’s story was genuine.

“It was like, ‘No, you are not telling me your life. You are telling me the story that you made up of your life’.”

“I was Googling it at the same time because I wasn’t believing

everything he was saying. And I’m looking and I’m going, ‘It really did happen. Man, this is going to work. This is going to be really big’.”

While Pinnock’s Aaron Wallace is a fictional character, the British actor worked closely with Wright during production to bring his character to life.

“For me, it was important to grab an essence of who he was, to add that to who we made Aaron,” Pinnock says.

“The way that he deals with things, his composure, his levelheadedness, his steady demeanour was something that I felt was important to capture for the role.”

Wright admits he found the collaboration enlightening.

“When I went through what I was going through in prison, one of the things that was very, very distracting was that it’s a very, very dangerous environment.

“I had to kind of change my character and be someone else so I spent so much time fighting that I did not really consider what I was going through until all these years later when I had the opportunity to be on set and to watch Nicholas perform,” he says.

“For the first time, in watching Nicholas’ performance, I was able to see myself as a third person.

“It became a therapeutic process for me to watch Nicholas and to move through episode by episode with Nicholas.

“So, yes, he’s an incredible actor, but for me he was more than just an actor. He was somebody that allowed

“There are so many different parts of Aaron that exude hope.” – Isaac Wright Jr

me to reflect on the pain that I was going through at that time.” Wright reveals he’d never planned to become a lawyer until he found himself behind bars for something he didn’t do.

“Something had happened with me shortly after I was arrested that caused me to make a decision to represent myself and, when that happened, the first thing that I had to do was I had to find out what the law was about,” he says.

“The first time, I picked up a law book and read the first paragraph, it felt like I was doing it all my life. Something happened inside me that embraced what I was reading. And so, at that moment, I knew that there was a bigger picture, that I was headed towards something that, ultimately, was going to work out in my favour.

“That was a moment that hope came into my life. And, obviously, several years had to pass before it accumulated into a victory, but that was the moment.”

He sees that same hope in For Life’s Aaron.

“There are so many different parts of Aaron that exude hope. There’s a scene where Aaron is in court for the first time and the prosecutor comes in. He’s late and he’s filling in for another prosecutor and he looks over, and he sees Aaron, the person that he sent to prison for life, representing this defendant.

“He goes, ‘How are you here?’ And (Aaron’s) words are – this has to be a millennial cliche – ‘Hard work and goodwill’.”