Bull showrunner talks season 2 changes, guest-stars

Talk about a trial by fire. When Glenn Gordon Caron was tapped as a showrunner for TV’s crime drama Bull, the series was already established as a hit.

After it debuted, it became one of the top new series of the 2016-17 season. Michael Weatherly, a fan-favourite on CBS’s drama NCIS, was successfully reinventing himself on Bull as a trial consultant loosely based on Phil McGraw, before he became Dr. Phil.

What’s more, in an act of faith, CBS renewed the show just after it brought in Caron as a consultant, with only a couple of months of new episodes left before he officially became the showrunner for season 2. His job was simply to avoid messing things up.

Ahead of the Sept. 26 première on Global and CBS, Caron spoke about making the show his own, the big-name guest stars ahead and his signature series, Moonlighting.

Q: Have you ever served on a jury yourself?

A: No, I’ve come awfully close — it seems like they call me every year.

Q: It seems you would shake things up on a jury, seeing behind all the mind games and psychology.

A: Not at all! I’m learning along with everyone else, but I have excellent help. Dr. Phil owned a trial science company and pretty much invented the whole idea of trial science, and he has all sorts of amazing stories to tell and theories of human behaviour.

Q: How will season 2 compare to season 1?

A: My marching orders were to make it more character driven. Perhaps a slightly different relationship between the case and the people. I think early on, because trial science was so new and different, the instinct was let’s do a purely procedural kind of story, and obviously it worked. The show’s wildly popular. But then people started to wonder could it be even richer and better if we spent some of that time getting to know the people who work at Trial Analysis Corporation (TAC) better?

The first three episodes that I worked on coincided with an arc that had been sketched in, involving a woman named J.P. Nunnelly (Eliza Dushku), an attorney who seeks out Bull’s help, and it’s a three-episode relationship. My giant fear was that people would look at those three and say “Well, this is just a different show.” But they didn’t. So we’re doing more of that this year — using the stories and trials to help us explore the lives of the people who work at TAC.

Q: Who are some of the guest stars coming up?

A: On the season premiere, we’re bringing back Diana (Jill Flint), who was kind of a fan favourite. Minka Kelly joins us as well in the premiere. We have a big guest star on our fourth epsidoe, Brad Garrett. And then a little further down the road, we just closed the deal to have Archie Panjabi, from The Good Wife. We’ve got a lot to be excited about.

Q: You created Moonlighting, which is known for the romantic tension between the leads. With that in mind, how will Bull and J.P.’s relationship progress romantically?

A: When you watch the last episode from the first season, there’s that sense of two people saying, “We need to take a break.” She’s incapable of trusting him, and the relationship dissolves. He’s sitting and reading the paper and she takes off. That isn’t to say she won’t be back. But I don’t think we’ll see her in the near future.

 

Bull returns for season 2 on Tuesday, Sept. 26, on CBS/Global