Atwell’s lawyer tries to right wrongs in ‘Conviction’
For evidence that careers can advance even under trying circumstances, “Conviction” fills the bill.
Premiering tomorrow at 10 p.m. on WCVB (Ch. 5), the ABC drama series casts Hayley Atwell (fresh off her two-season run on the network in “Marvel’s Agent Carter”) as Hayes Morrison, an attorney and member of a former presidential family who has succeeded in alienating her loved ones. Her actions could land her in jail and derail her mother’s political ambitions, unless she agrees to work with a New York district attorney (“CSI: NY” alum Eddie Cahill) in a newly formed unit that probes suspected cases of wrongful conviction.
“It’s very unlikely that we really get to know the ins and outs of people’s kind of unresolved family issues within a very public realm,” Atwell said of her new character’s background, “so that obviously was not available to me. I looked at just watching people in positions of power, and the faces that they have to put on and how they choose to work a room.
“You can see that with CEOs or movie stars or politicians across the board, and I think that is a really interesting part of who Hayes Morrison is, that she can do that,” Atwell said. “She’s been trained. It’s in her DNA to know how to do that, but then, what makes it interesting as an actor is to find where the chinks in the armor are, and the triggers of where she might just mess it up and the kind of underlying vulnerability ... kind of the cost of having to be on form all the time, and what that kind of does to her own psyche.”
“Conviction” weaves that persona into a theme that executive producer Liz Friedman (“House,” “Elementary”) deems increasingly prevalent.
“I think we are at a really unique social moment where it’s clear that the legal system, which we all rely on so much, has these key flaws in it, and we are trying to figure out how to make sense of that for ourselves,” Friedman said. “We need the police, but we are now seeing them as people, and we are seeing that there are mistakes made there. And how do we correct that and go forward? What’s great is to be able to have some of those conversations in the context of these great mystery stories that we are telling.”
Hayes fits into the scenario, Friedman said, as “a very troubled, sort of iconic woman who had been in the public eye and had made missteps. What’s it like for her to look at people who have made missteps or just been put in a bad situation in their life, and they are paying this huge price that she’s never had to pay because of her privilege? Instantly, I knew that’s who it had to be.”
With Mark Gordon (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Criminal Minds”) also among its executive producers, “Conviction” also features series veterans Shawn Ashmore (“The Following”), Merrin Dungey (“Alias”) and Emily Kinney (“The Walking Dead”). The show gives co-star Cahill a chance to refine his screen image from “CSI: NY’s” streetwise Detective Don Flack — and even Rachel’s (Jennifer Aniston) hunky assistant Tag on “Friends” — as he now plays the more sophisticated D.A. Conner Wallace.
“He aspires to be who she is, or covets what she has and maybe where she comes from,” Cahill said. “He’s politically ambitious. I think he’s very bright, as is she. Hayley had a really nice way of summing up their attraction, saying, ‘They give each other mental orgasms.’ I feel like there are these two sort of prizefighters who are constantly figuring out how to best each other ... and in that, I think there’s respect, I think there’s attraction, and I think there’s a real will to win at all costs.”