Fairly Legal Q&A: Michael Sardo talks Kate and the Wicked Witch

This winter USA is welcoming a new character to its lineup with the new series Fairly Legal set to premiere January 20th. And in preparation for the series debut, creator and executive producer, Michael Sardo took the time out for a conference call to discuss his new series.

Fairly Legal stars Sarah Shahi as Kate Reed, a disillusioned attorney who, after her father’s death, gives up practicing law in order to become a mediator. And while this may seem a crazy idea, once you consider Kate’s own troubled love for the law and general disdain for the injustices in the law, being a peacemaker is probably her best bet.

And like any good character Kate has her own set of demons: The first of these would be her evil stepmother. Virginia Williams takes on the role of Lauren Reed, Kate’s late father’s wife and now her new boss as well. Kate’s relationship with Lauren is simple: “I hate you, it’s easier that way,” Kate says. And in act, Kate goes so far as to liken Lauren to another well-known villain. “She thinks of Lauren as the Wicked Witch,” Sardo says. “It just came to her one day. And then she started populating her phone and making her ringtones the rest of the characters of the movie, which sort of neatly fell into play. At this moment when we see her, she’s Dorothy and she’s trying to find her way back to a comfortable spot. And that’s part of her evolution throughout the show that we’re going to see from her.“

Kate’s second demon comes in her relationship with Justin (played by Michael Trucco), her ex-husband. When asked about how challenging it was to create two characters with a shared romantic history, Sardo says that discovering this relationship was very important to him. “It was difficult,” Sardo says, “but it was fun. So often you see will they-won’t they sleep together. I was just interested in what’s left when a relationship breaks apart. And seeing this relationship they have some interesting themes where it’s not the partner you expect who is unsatisfied with the way things are going. Kate in general is not about neat. And so I was interested in a relationship that wasn’t neat. There is a complicated relationship and it doesn’t work on some levels, but on some very primal levels it works perfectly. And they struggle with that.”

Kate struggles too with her identity, hers and the idea of the man her father really was. Upon his death, Kate learns that her father had secrets of his own. “I was interested in the idea that Kate has this figure of her dad,” Sardo says. “He is this important figure in her life and when he dies she starts to learn some other things about him. {Her father’s friend David} is the person who starts to say to Kate ‘Maybe your father wasn’t who you thought he was. But at the same time, maybe what’s important is not living in his shadow. What you think he is: leave it at that, and now become the person you want to be.’“

But who exactly does Kate want to be?

Sardo describes Kate as a woman of “unbreakable confidence,” assured in her ability to find the truth of any situation. Sardo continues, “What that means is not that you’re all-knowing and confident in every step, but that you’re willing to be lost at times during that process. She knows that she’ll get there and she’s comfortable making missteps along the way.”

Fairly Legal also features Baron Vaughn as Kate’s trusted assistant and Richard Dean Anderson as David Smith. You can watch Kate’s missteps in her search for justice every Thursday on USA starting January 20th at 10pm.

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Images courtesy of David Moir, Frank Ockenfels 3/USA Network.