Matthew Rhys talks season 2 of ‘Perry Mason’ l GMA

Now with an Emmy Award winning actor who we know from TVs, The Americans and movies like A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and now Matt Reese is back as the famous TV lawyer in season two of Perry Mason. Take a look. Can we focus please? I am. You're the one who suddenly wanted to give up criminal law and only do civil. This is civil. You're the one who said civil war kept firms in business. I'm just being practical.

Since when? One time in court tomorrow. 9 a.m. A practical person would own a date book. I don't even want to have a secretary. We love it. All right Matthew.

So you go from being a private detective to being a lawyer. Season two, which one is harder to play? The detective or the lawyer? Oh the lawyer, for me the lawyer. The courtroom theatrics are far more intimidating than the sort of hard drinking, you know, hungover lot. I found great affinity with very quickly. Oh dear. I mean I'm no detective but everything else is in place. You can all drink, great.

Perry Mason is such an iconic American character on American television. Did you have any hesitation at all about taking on that role? At the very beginning when it was slightly miscommunicated that we were going to remake Perry Mason I said you can't remake Perry Mason and then it was explained it would be a reimagining of Perry Mason. And they went back to the source material, back to the books, back to the original setting of LA in the 30s and they wanted to give him a far more kind of rich, slightly diverse backstory that would inform the origin story. So there was a slight hesitation but when I read the scripts it was a no brainer. Such a big name and as someone in my age bracket I remember the original show clearly and I like that this is a reimagining of it. So if we're going back to the 30s I think I noticed in a note that in one show you got to ride like a vintage Harley. Is it a chopper? Was that like one of these, oh check the list I get to do that.

To a degree the writers kind of said what do you want to do and I said oh let's put some action in, let's get horses or motorbikes. And then they introduced me to a 1930s Harley Davidson and they gave me a training day and very quickly they went I don't think that's going to work. So they gave the Harley to the action vehicles team and they said turn it into an electric bike in a week. So these poor enormous fans of vintage motorcycles were kind of going what are they butchered this Harley. And when we were out on location it divided a lot of people, there were a lot of predominantly gentlemen of a certain age would come up and say is this a 1930 X, Y, Z, I go yes it is and they went why can't I hear it. And I went it's now an electric bike. And about half said yeah it's incredible and the other half said that's an abomination.

A very quiet motorcycle. You're now in the movie also, Cocaine Bear. As the bear of course according to your Twitter account. That's what I tell her. Alongside your partner, Carrie Russell and the reason that I mentioned that is because you did tweet that. I did, I did. Unashamedly.

I said she said at the time you have no shame. I said no absolutely not. It was boiling in that thing. It really was. In Ireland as Tennessee. Who knew Ireland could double as Tennessee. But yes we had a great summer in Ireland.

And you know we both knew Elizabeth Banks from a long time ago and as I was reading the script I said who's playing that first part. That little thing, the guy who knocks his head because I don't know. I went text Banks tell her I'll play it. Better yet ask her if I can play it. What an incredible performance in that movie. For who? For Carrie or for myself? The entire, for all of you. Oh yeah.

So much critical acclaim. Yes. I mean it was a swing. You know even when you title a film Cocaine Bear. Yeah. Is that going to work? So yeah I think they were all very happy the way it turned out. And when you're not acting apparently you are also a first mate.

You can kind of double a nice little side hustle that you have here. Yes. And part of the foolishly I purchased a very old wooden boat that was built in New York in Brooklyn in the 1930s and it was named Rebit. So when I saw that it was named Rebit in 1939 and being Welsh and a fan of Welsh Rebit I went oh this is fated. I should buy this wreck of a boat and refurbish it and charter it out to the public and then that's what I foolishly did. So sometimes yes I am the first mate and I make a Welsh Rebit on board using a blowtorch. And he plans to take it out for three years.

The boat. This morning talked about a cruise that's going on. Oh I saw. Three years. Yes. Yes. So I'll charge people about twenty nine thousand dollars.

I saw first mate for three years. I'm on board. Great. We're on board with the boat. We're on board with you Matthew Reese and season two of Perry Mason premieres Monday night on HBO and HBO Max. Well hey there GMA fans. Robin Roberts here.

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