‘Matlock’: Skye P. Marshall Reveals Flirty Improvised Jason Ritter Line That Made Final Cut

Skye P. Marshall and Jason Ritter‘s chemistry has only grown over the course of Matlock‘s two seasons, and Marshall knows that fans of the CBS drama are eager for their characters, Olympia and Julian, to get back together. Marshall tells TV Insider that she sees fan reactions about the ex-spouses being each other’s “endgame,” and she gets it. She says that her friendship with Ritter bleeds through the screen to make Olympia and Julian’s chemistry feel real. And oftentimes, their improvised banter makes it into the final cut of the episodes. That happened with Matlock Season 2 Episode 12, which aired on April 2.

In “The Cavalry Isn’t Coming,” Olympia and Julian traveled to find a scientist who may have been a whistleblower in the peak of the Welbrexa study scandal. Now that Julian knows Matty’s (Kathy Bates) secret and is helping her and Olympia on the secret case, trust has been restored between the co-parents.

“It’s easy to judge. It’s so much harder to seek to understand why someone is the way they are,” Marshall tells TV Insider of the Olympia-Julian reconciliation. “Because when you seek to understand why somebody is or made a decision that you may not agree with, that requires a deep level of compassion, patience, and a willingness to believe that good people can make bad choices. And that is exactly what Olympia had to make time for: the patience, the compassion, and the understanding because of what she knows the relationship of Julian and Senior [Beau Bridges] to be, and Julian’s deep desire to be recognized and seen by his father. He would do anything for that light and the pain of the deception and the betrayal, I think that never truly goes away, but it does hold up a mirror.”

Because of their two children, and because Julian has taken accountability for helping to bury the Welbrexa study, Marshall says there is “a little bit brighter light between” the exes. They’re “on the other side of accountability,” she adds. That allows for playfulness and tenderness to return, and it showed in that car scene in Season 2 Episode 12, which ended with an improvised line from Ritter that produced Marshall’s giggle.

“It was extremely challenging for Jason and I to do that car scene,” Marshall says. “Even doing the scene following the car scene where we find the scientist Priva, because we have this contagious laugh that we share, and it keeps us unhinged and it prolongs the day. And we know going into it, it’s like going into the ring with two clowns, and we are pretending to be adults. We’re trying so hard to keep our inner child managed, but it makes the crew laugh a lot.”

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“We look into each other’s eyes, and because we have a collection of jokes over the years now, that’s the chemistry that people see,” she continues. “No matter what Julian and Olympia are going through, they can always see the spark, even the spark of love during the chaos, that I’m fighting for him because of the love that he’s admitting to Olympia because of his love for the family.”

Marshall praises her costar’s ability to make her laugh on set and says it’s part of what makes their onscreen relationship magical.

“When he buttoned the car scene with, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll teach you how,’ referencing that he would teach me how to have game while dating, he improvised that line,” Marshall shares. “And so when I giggled at the end of that, that’s because that’s Jason. Jason’s always going to leave those types of fun and flirty scenes with a button, and he’ll give you a variety of buttons, and then I never know what to anticipate, and you get that natural giggle out of me. That’s what makes the Olympia/Julian scene so [magical], especially now that it’s not so tense.”

If you thought Olympia and Julian had Matlock‘s best chemistry, prepare to be challenged. After having two characters named after him in the series (Edwin Kingston and Remy Hodges), Marshall’s husband, Edwin Hodge, made his Matlock debut at the end of this episode and will play a significant role in Episode 13, airing on April 9 (and potentially in Matlock Season 3). In the scene after the car, Julian said that people deserved to find love that made them feel “weak in the knees,” including Olympia. When Hodge’s Langston Wright appeared, the camera cut to Olympia’s shaky knees.

Tune in next week to find out what Matlock has in store for this real-life couple.

Matlock, Thursdays, 9/8c, CBS