‘The Rainmaker’ signals the return of blue skies at USA

Much like a rainmaker is a person adept at bringing in new business and revenue to a company, USA is placing its bet on “The Rainmaker,” a new drama series premiering Friday and based on John Grisham’s 1995 bestselling novel, to bring viewers hungry for scripted content back to the network.

Once a beacon of “blue sky” series like the light, character-driven hit shows “Monk,” “Suits” and “White Collar,” followed by darker fare like “Mr. Robot,” over the past several years NBCUniversal, the parent company of USA, has focused primarily on unscripted programming including reality, sports and other live events. In the last five years, the network’s only scripted series were the second season of “Dirty John” (after the first season aired on sister channel Bravo) and “Chucky,” which aired simultaneously on Syfy and USA until the series ended in 2024.

Whether “The Rainmaker,” developed by Michael Seitzman and Jason Richman with Blumhouse Television, ushers in a new era of scripted series and viewers for the network remains to be seen, but the swing they’re taking is a big one with a property known in both the literary and film space. It’s been 30 years since the “Rainmaker” novel was released, becoming one of the fastest-selling books at the time — 300,000 copies were sold in its first four days of release. Adapting it for the big screen was a no-brainer; two years later, the feature film starring Matt Damon would hit theaters.

For the 10-episode series, of which Grisham is an executive producer, the book’s Memphis locale has been shifted to present-day Charleston, S.C., where scrappy but brilliant law school graduate Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) gets sacked on his first day at prestigious firm Tinley Britt when he rubs legal legend Leo F. Drummond (John Slattery) the wrong way. Desperate for a job, he lands at a less reputable firm, J. Lyman Stone & Associates, owned by tough lawyer Jocelyn “Bruiser” Stone (Lana Parrilla) whose one other staffer is ambulance-chasing paralegal Deck Shifflet (P.J. Byrne).

But the pressure is on immediately when Bruiser asks Rudy point-blank if he has what it takes to be a rainmaker for the firm. Proving himself may come sooner than he thinks when he digs into the mysterious hospital death of a client’s son that starts looking more like murder, which opens a can of nefarious worms that keeps things heated for the drama’s first season.

Milo Callaghan stars as Rudy Baylor in “The Rainmaker,” a character played by Matt Damon in the feature film.

(Christopher Barr / USA Network)

Here, newcomer Callaghan and TV veteran Slattery talk about sparring onscreen, what their characters could learn from each other and the challenges Callaghan, a British native, had speaking a South Carolina dialect — though the show was shot in Dublin, Ireland.

With an adaptation like this, did you read Grisham’s novel or stick with the show scripts?

John Slattery: I read the book and it has a slower grow than the show, by necessity. The show has to have some more peaks to keep people’s interest, whereas the book seems to be a longer curve. But I was excited as soon as I read it. I thought that it’s good to be the antagonist as far as having something active to play. I thought, “You know, if we execute this well, it’ll be a really entertaining courtroom potboiler.”

Milo Callaghan: We had all 10 scripts from the off, which is quite rare, so I really deep-dived the scripts, which are so tight. I felt like it sat in my chest really well. Then I watched the film, I read the book, and I think John Grisham’s amazing.

What was it about your characters that drew you in when you signed on?

Callaghan: Fundamentally, for me, Rudy Baylor is a kid who’s grieving [his brother], and then he’s trying to take responsibility for himself. His heart’s always in the right place, and the beauty of the interactions he has with the other characters is they all mentor him into realizing that the world’s maybe not the idealistic haven that he anticipated. Sometimes he has to learn to bend and move his lines in the sand, but he has a really strong moral character.

Slattery: You think Leo’s one thing, and then you see a side that you didn’t expect but, yeah, he’s a self-described bully. And being a successful trial attorney, there’s a bag of tricks that probably grows with each year, so he’s probably pretty adept at using all of them or whatever he needs given the situation.

Leo and Rudy don’t hit it off right off the bat, something evident when Leo challenges Rudy on his first day and is subsequently fired. Why exactly did Leo do that?

Slattery: The real reason he fires him is not, obviously, what he tells him, but maybe he sees a threat in the kid being that his moral code might differ from the present administration [at Tinley Britt], so maybe you get rid of those people. But Rudy’s smart and I think given Leo’s ego, he probably sees anyone adept as, “You remind me of myself.” But the good thing about Leo is you can’t trust anything he says, and that I find interesting.

Callaghan: I would say they’re more alike than you would think. They both clearly have a gift for rhetoric, and they’re both bullish. My sense is that Leo has learned to curb his enthusiasm and learned that power isn’t necessarily in bulldozing into a situation. And he lets Rudy slip up quite a lot. A lot of his victories are giving Rudy the opportunity to shoot himself in the foot as opposed to shooting him in the foot, and that’s definitely learned behavior. But Leo’s the guy that everyone wants to be. It’s a classic David and Goliath situation.

Rudy is among the new hires at Tinley Britt, but he doesn’t last the day.

(Christopher Barr / USA Network)

The young lawyers like Rudy and his girlfriend Sarah (Madison Iseman), who works at Tinley Britt, clearly have things to learn from Leo — but does he have things to learn from them?

Slattery: He may not think he does, but everybody does. And Maddie’s character, Sarah, lets him know it. He sees himself in her as well, and maybe he sees something that he could use to his advantage, which is her loyalty to Rudy. He’s always looking to learn something, whether it’s from someone or just the cracks in their armor or the information he can wheedle out of somebody.

Callaghan: I was the youngest person on that set and, in the same way, Rudy is the youngest person in the business that he’s in. He’s got Deck and Bruiser and even Leo and all of these people who have so many years on him and so many experiences on him. While I do think he teaches them things, they will draw him into a more realistic view of the world.

There’s a scene in the first episode where Sarah is talking to Leo and he drops French fries on the floor for her to pick up. Are we supposed to like him in that moment?

Slattery: Does he really care what anybody thinks of him, like these kids who are just starting out? I don’t think he’s worried about anybody else’s opinion. As far as the audience goes, I’m not sure how important that is either whether you like Leo or not.

Legal dramas come with a lot of scenes set in the courtroom. How was working on those together?

Slattery: I bet you there isn’t a lot of a long list of actors who go, “Oh, good, I get to spend two weeks in the courtroom.” It’s not conducive oftentimes, and sometimes you’re like, “Wait, wait, what episode is this and what scene?”

Callaghan: John commands presence, and he’s also very loose and never does it the same way twice. It’s always a dance. … Probably the biggest privilege of working with him is that it’s just different every time. He could be a critic and he could tell you what he thought about what you were doing, but that first day was fantastic. He got up and we just went at each other, and it really felt like that was a big moment.

Slattery: I think doing something the same way is a waste of time. I mean, why do it twice the same way? They already have that version. Having been on the other side and edited a bunch and directed a bunch, it wasn’t until I did that that it really sunk in.

“John commands presence, and he’s also very loose and never does it the same way twice. It’s always a dance,” says Milo Callaghan about his co-star in the courtroom. (Christopher Barr / USA Network)

Bruiser (Lana Parrilla) brings Rudy (Milo Callaghan) aboard at her firm, and he’s challenged by moral questions. “His heart is always going to be in the place, but it’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” Callaghan says. (Christopher Barr / USA Network)

Vets like Leo and Bruiser are used to crossing moral lines, but how will Rudy react when his morals are challenged?

Callaghan: His heart is always going to be in the place, but it’s a conundrum, isn’t it? Even in life, morality is such a funny thing because regardless of your heart being in the right place, no one sees themselves as the bad guy except Leo Drummond, who sees himself as a bully. So with Rudy, there’s always an element of: Has he lived enough years or had enough experiences to really determine what’s right and wrong?

Milo, how challenging was it to do the American accent? On top of the show being set in South Carolina, it was also shot entirely in Dublin, so you probably also had an Irish accent floating about.

Slattery: I didn’t know … the state of show business in the United States was that you go to Dublin to double for South Carolina. That’s how screwed up it is in Los Angeles.

Callaghan: Any Brit doing an American accent feels a certain level of anxiety, but I drilled it and drilled it. I had a great dialect coach called Jude McSpadden who was fantastic, and she kept me on track. Then, also, P.J. Byrne (Deck) wasn’t shy to look me in the eye every now and then and say, “Why are you saying it like that?” I had a great group of people who were really hypercritical of it when the accent fell off, which wasn’t often because I worked hard.

Slattery: Milo was in every scene basically, and he’s doing an American accent to boot, which does weird things to people. Your voice goes up an octave or you start to walk differently. It’s a bit of a head trip. But he did a great job.