Jason Ritter Explains How His 'Matlock' Role Parallels His Real-Life Marriage (Exclusive)

When Matlock premiered this fall, high-priced attorneys Julian Markston (Jason Ritter) and Olympia Lawrence (Skye P. Marshall) were happily divorcing and Olympia was flirting with the idea of starting an affair with Elijah Walker (Eme Ikwuakor), her co-worker at the legal firm of Jacobson Moore.

But as the season progressed, Olympia decided it wasn’t an opportune thing to do, and Elijah relocated to the firm’s Texas office temporarily to work out the details of a lawsuit. He needed space. That gave Julian, who maybe wasn’t as happy about the divorce as his ex, an opportunity to try to mend bridges with Olympia, and in last week’s episode, we saw more of their backstory and some interesting new developments in their relationship.

“Sometimes when you have some distance and some separation you can see the person that you fell in love with again,” Ritter told Parade during a set visit to Matlock. “I think they snipe at each other, or they trigger each other, and they get annoyed or whatever, but Olympia’s Olympia. She’s brilliant, she’s beautiful, she’s incredible. And they work in the same place. He sees her and, I think, part of their attraction to each other was their minds. When he sees her in action and he sees how quick she is and how good she is at her job, it’s like, ‘How did I mess this up? What did I do? Is there any way back?’”

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There definitely was a way back on last week’s episode. As Julian was helping Olympia pack up their brownstone getting ready for a move, and their kids were away at a sleepover, Julian and Olympia had one, too, which they are now trying to keep a secret from everyone at the office.

“There’s another driving force,” Ritter pointed out. “Julian has a lot of complicated feelings towards his dad [Beau Bridges]. One thing that Julian has is, ‘I am not you, I do not want to be you, I do not want to have six wives.’ I think he had four, but still. And I also think Julian wants their kids to have a family unit. So, there’s a part of him that feels like if there was any way to could come back together and be the family that when I was so angry at my dad as a little teenager I thought of the kind of father and husband I wanted to be, maybe we can get back to that.”

Will Julian and Olympia get back together on Matlock?

It will be interesting to see if tonight’s episodes takes Julian and Olympia’s relationship any further. Whether or not it does, Ritter says that it’s easy for him to relate to Julian’s feelings for Olympia, who as he has mentioned is a force of nature, because in real life, he, too, is married to a strong, successful woman, Melanie Lynskey.

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“There are so many parallels,” Ritter said. “There are lots of amazing things. The feeling of being inspired by your partner, especially in the same field where you go, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, you’re better than me,’ it’s very attractive. I definitely pull from that. I think one of the things that attracted them to each other is their ability to support each other and have these two children and still both pursue their own careers.

“Melanie and I also do that for each other. We’re raising our daughter, but we’re also supporting each other and every decision we make is as a family and does this job work for us as a family? Not just, ‘Good luck I’m doing this and see you later.’ Yeah, there’s a lot of parallels. No one's asked me that before.”

Matlock airs Thursday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.

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