Interview with Howard Gordon and Daniel Pearle

At the beginning of Accused’s second season, series creator Howard Gordon and showrunner Daniel Pearle didn’t have a clear overarching theme in mind. What they had instead was a goal.

“Honestly, we just wanted to get better,” Gordon told TheWrap. “We’re testing the limits.”

That’s a tall order considering Accused is already a difficult feat of television. Each episode of the anthology series plays out like its own little mystery and is about someone different who is on trial. Through a series of flashbacks that play out over the course of the episode, the audience slowly learns why he is in the courtroom before the series finally reveals his crimes and conviction. According to Pearle, one of the main questions they faced in the Fox drama’s first season was how to tie together a series of completely different standalone stories. But as the show settles in with its eight-episode second season, the team is confident of letting the format, script and performances speak for themselves.

“One of the funniest aspects of the series is how different it can be from episode to episode in terms of style and visual world,” Pearle said. “We were bolder this year in terms of the genre of the different episodes.”

That means an episode starring Taylor Schilling that relies on action, an unusually dramatic episode for Ken Jeong, and even a more lighthearted episode. The result was also the most ambitious episode the series has attempted to date in the upcoming season two finale.

“It’s set in the near, quasi-parallel future, five seconds in the future, and deals with AI and our dependence on machines,” Gordon said. “We believe this is a really flexible and appropriate form to explore everything from AI to bioengineering to whatever technological frontiers we create, without keeping up with the morality and law of it all.”

This ambition can be seen in the premiere episode of Accused. The episode, titled “Lorraine’s Story,” centers on a woman who claims to be psychic (Felicity Huffman) who takes up residence in the home of a family searching for their missing son. But rather than treating Lorraine as the crook the prosecution believes she is, the delicate episode examines the tug-of-war Lorraine feels between knowing she should leave this grieving family alone and hoping she can find her son .

“It was a brave experiment. “We’re super proud of this episode in a lot of ways,” Gordon said, noting that Lorraine wouldn’t feel out of place in an episode of “The X-Files.” “I hate to use the word theme, but there are these themes of loss and hope. And purely on an observational level, it’s a character that we were really interested in, and that’s just catnip for us as writers.”

Pearle noted that the episode would not have worked without Huffman’s appearance. “The story is really about her inner life,” Pearle said. “It’s such a tour de force, and the direction everything was going supported that. We were basically lucky that she read it and responded to it.”

The episode came about largely because of writer Mike Skerrett, who is “a protégé of Amy Lippman, for lack of a better word,” Gordon said. Lippman introduced Gordon and Pearle to Skerrett, who came up with the idea for the episode. When they thought Huffman was right for the role, Lippman put them in touch with Huffman, who she had worked with “about 20 years ago.”

“She was literally the only person we thought about,” Gordon said. “When she said yes, we said, ‘Hey, how about you ask your husband to do it?’ just kidding. She said yes.” So William H. Macy joined the cast to play Ray, Lorraine’s ex-husband who still loves her even though the two are no longer romantically involved.

Huffman, Macy, Schilling and Jeong aren’t the only big names set to appear this season. Cobie Smulders, Vella Lovell, Dina Shihabi, Isabel Arraiza, Patrick J. Adams, Justin Chambers, Danny Pino, Nick Cannon and Michael Chiklis will all appear in Season 2. Unlike last season when Gordon and his team had to sell the idea when I shared the show with people, this time the series received several “inbound calls from some wonderful actors.” Through Hollywood, Gordon also heard that several stars told their agents they had a “great experience” on the show.

“For a lot of them, we couldn’t even find the stories because they were a limited number,” Gordon said.

Pearle believes it’s the show’s format that makes Accused so attractive to actors. “It’s like making a long short film. You really get a lot of creative ownership,” Pearle said. “For a lot of these actors, it’s a chance to do something they haven’t done before.”

The same element that makes Accused such a dream for actors makes it incredibly challenging for writers. When asked how long it takes to write an episode, Gordon laughed and then said “a year.”

“Honestly, it’s hard,” Pearle said. “It could easily get bad. There is no buy-in as these are brand new characters. You can’t rest on an audience that’s already invested in this story.”

Due to delays caused by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes last year, Season 2 was inadvertently given what Gordon described as “more incubation time.” This coupled with Fox’s reduction of the episode order from 12 to eight changed the focus of the season. “In the end, we were very grateful that Fox, who originally ordered twelve, only ordered eight. “We’d rather do a great episode,” Gordon said. “Otherwise it won’t work.”

The question of how long their courtroom drama should continue is entirely up to Fox. “If I did this for the rest of my career – and it’s a lot shorter than the rest of Daniels – I’d be thrilled. This is something that can only push even more boundaries,” Gordon said. “It was very, very fruitful. I’ve been on shows that don’t work and you feel like you’re dressing the corpse, as I call it, or shows that are so limited. It’s actually unlimited.”

Gordon praised Pearle as well as season two writers Mike Skerrett and Maile Meloy. “It’s a group effort and the team is strong. If I could, I would sign her for the next five years,” Gordon said. “I hope things go well for Fox so we can move forward.”

New episodes of Accused premiere Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.