Over three seasons, Hulu drama Reasonable Doubt, created by Scandal and Little Fires Everywhere alum Raamla Mohamed Hunter, has delivered on being a legal thriller filled with messy personal affairs and unexpected twists and turns revolving around super lawyer Jax Stewart, played by Emayatzy Corinealdi. The newly released season four is no different.
Last season literally ended with a bang when the disgruntled Monica (Brandee Evans), who sexually violated a minor, popped up at Jax’s new law firm with a gun. The first three episodes grapple with the repercussions of Jax being shot and what it means for her newly launched firm. Despite their uneasy relationship, Jax’s husband Lewis (McKinley Freeman) allows Jax’s trusted investigator Daniel (Tim Jo) to put in a call to Corey Cash for help so Morris Chestnut returns, as does Joseph Sikora as Bill, the white attorney who dates Black women but helped push Jax out at the firm.
New additions include singer Tank, who plays vile music exec Eric Cropper and Jax’s main client, Beauty in Black star Taylor Polidore Williams as Eric’s wife Brooke, La La Anthony as Eric’s first wife Melina, and then Megan Good as Regina Harris.
Good’s role is a quieter one than fans are used to seeing from her. A whole generation has grown up with Good from her roles as a child actor in Friday, Eve’s Bayou and Cousin Skeeter, to adult roles in the Think Like a Man franchise, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, the TV series Minority Report and both Shazam movies. In Reasonable Doubt, Good, who starred in the Prime Video series Harlem, is in a supporting role. Atypical for TV attorneys, viewers aren’t introduced to her character as an ace in the courtroom. Instead, her personal life gets a more play very quickly.
“I thought she was great in Harlem, and her whole career has been amazing. But I felt when I watched Harlem [that] I saw a lighter, different side of her, and I was like, Okay, she really has a range that a lot of people haven’t seen. And she’s killing this show,” Mohamed Hunter shared with The Hollywood Reporter about Good’s casting during a set visit in Atlanta where the L.A.-set series is largely filmed. “I’m just grateful she wanted to do it.”
Good was a constant presence by her husband Jonathan Majors’ side during his highly publicized 2023 trial in New York, where he was eventually convicted of assault and harassment of his ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari. Good and Majors later wed last year. “If you know someone and if you believe in someone, it’s not conditional,” she has previously said of standing by him amid legal troubles and career fallout.
Below, Good spoke with THR about her role on Reasonable Doubt, what she’s learned about acting from her husband and the moves she made to break out of the pretty box that incidentally has landed her here.
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Can you talk about your role in Reasonable Doubt and how this came about for you.
I am playing Regina Harris, the new DA. It came about because we were talking about how I would love to come on the show and do something with Raamla and Emayatzy. Next thing you know, I came in and I was like, “The only other thing I would have been besides an actress, is a lawyer.” So this is fun for me, because I’ve never gotten a chance to play something like this. It’s nice to be in a place in my life where I’m able to expand as an actress and be seen in different ways, and experience different things and bring different things to it.
There are people you already know in this.
Tons. From Joseph [Sikora] who I did The Intruder with, to McKinley [Freeman], who was in the first film that I directed [If Not Now, When?] to DeVaughn Nixon [who plays Tyger Cropper], I’ve known him since we were 14 or 15. Tank I’ve known since I was 19. Taylor [Polidore Williams] I did [Tyler Perry’s] Divorce in Black with. I could go on and on. It’s really nice to be around so many really beautiful, good-spirited people.
What is your character’s personality? What’s her backstory?
Regina has a lot of complex things happening at home. Her mother is really sick and she’s her mom’s primary caregiver. She’s trying to balance both work and the career she wants and where she wants to go in that space, and also take care of her mother without any help. She doesn’t have a husband. Her sister is very much against helping her mom. Their mother gave them up when they were both children, and so her sister still very much feels a way about that.
Regina is trying to get the love she didn’t get when she was a child, somehow make it right or make it make sense for her. And she’s struggling with that because her mom is still the same person she was when she gave them up. I also think Regina is trying to figure out what she wants in her life. It’s not just about the career or her mom. It’s not just about if she wants be in a relationship or not. It’s, what does she really want for her life? What’s going to make her feel fulfilled and whole and healed?
What’s her relationship with Jax?
Initially, she is Jax’s lawyer on the case against Miss Wilson, who is played by Brandee Evans, the character [who shot her] at the end of the last season. It goes from her representing Jax to her going against Jax. It gets very spicy
I’m not trying to get in your business, but how has having an actor for a husband [Jonathan Majors] helped you in your craft?
Amazing. It’s so interesting because I always talk about how we came into this completely differently. I came into it as a child actor, around 4 years old. it was a hobby, for fun. By the time I was 13, 14 years old, I was working consistently. And by the grace of God, I haven’t stopped since then. There’s only been maybe a year in my entire career I haven’t worked. When I think about it, that’s mind-blowing. I’ve never had any other job in my life.
Jonathan came in as someone who pursued this as a young teenager, someone who went to North Carolina School of Performing Arts, went to Yale. He has done every single August Wilson play, playing the title characters. Our approaches are different, so learning from someone I really respect, who I was already a fan of as a talent. Before we ever met, I was like, He’s different. He’s a generational talent.
After watching The Last Black Man in San Francisco, I looked him up, because how do you play two different characters in a two-character play?
Have you seen Magazine Dreams?
I did. But that was a little hard for me to watch because it’s pretty intense.
It’s probably the film [of his] I’ve seen the most now, just because he doesn’t watch himself. I had to watch the screener before it came out. And then after I watched it, I was like, Hold on, I need to watch that again. But I watched it again. And then, of course, at the film festivals and then different screenings. I’ve probably seen the movie nine or 10 times at this point. And I just was like, There’s no way he’s this good. He’s really good.
So to have him damn near as a coach when I’m working is really a gift because he gives 110 percent and he means it and loves it’ he lives it and he breathes it. And while I love it and I live and breathe it too, it’s a completely different approach [from] when you were a child actor, and kind of raised into it versus you chose it, and you went and you pursued it and you cultivated it. And so coming together, it’s really fun because there’s such a mutual respect. Like he watched me growing up
You are iconic.
Thank you. So it’s fun. It’s a fun household to have these conversations [in] and to have so much to offer each other. I think even in navigating the industry, he’s very pure and very not exposed to a lot of things. And while I’ve chosen to hold on to my purity, there’s also a ton of just wisdom that comes with seeing things firsthand and just knowing how to discern certain things and being like, yeah, that’s that, and then figuring out how to navigate those things and always be true to yourself and never compromise. So when you put our roles together, it’s really beautiful, because we get to both be kids together and be adults who cover each other and who have similar understandings and completely different understandings that both actually just kind of interlock and add so much to each other’s life. It’s really nice.
And that shows when he’s training me for a role. I can feel the difference, and I have access to things that have always been there, but I may not have known how to grab access to them, or may not have known that they were there at all. So it’s kind of reinvigorated my excitement for what comes out of me as an actress. But as I said earlier, there are things now that I’m discovering that have come out in my 40s that were totally different than when I was in my 30s. There’s things that will come out when I become a mother. There’s things that will come out when I get in my 50s, and some I’m excited about all of it.
When did you decide to break out of the pretty girl box?
I tried to break out of it for a long time. And I fought a lot [to break out of it] for years. That was initially why I cut my hair off. I was like, Okay, if I keep having long hair, people are going to think this. You watch child actors try to cross over from being a child actor, and most the time, people go, No, you’re just still this person, or this character. They keep calling you by that character’s name. And especially if you’re a young woman, they don’t ever want to believe that you can grow up.
[I was] 19 years old when I realized, I still look 16, but I’m getting ready to start getting into my 20s, and I want to make that transition. The only way that I knew [how to do that] at that time was like, I need to make them see that I’m a woman, that I am a young woman, and that I’m not a little girl anymore.
Then by the time I was 25, 26 I was like, Well, they know I’m a woman. Now I want to do something different. [I had] a lot of pushback on that. When you have auditions for certain things [and the conversation is], I don’t think she’s right for that. I’m like, why? [And it’s] like, I don’t know. She’s just… [And] I’m like, she’s just what? I’m just what? You just have a preconceived notion of me based on either how I look or characters that I’ve played, that you think that’s who I am and that’s all I have to offer.
Initially I took it as a challenge, but then it got frustrating over time. God really was cultivating in me [a spirit of] not allowing myself to get discouraged and to take pride in who I am and in who I’m growing into, and not letting anybody diminish that for me or my process. And also not rushing through the process knowing that everything will happen in God’s time [and that] I just have to do my part. But obviously, it was quite a journey.
I hadn’t done TV in probably a decade when I decided to do a show for NBC called Deception. I was playing a cop, and no one had seen me do that yet. The last thing I did before that was Californication where I played RZA’s love interest. But I had to do nothing with sex appeal, nothing with any tight clothes so that’s why I chose to do [Deception] at that time. From there, it was really going after the things that were outside of that box, and crazy enough, a lot of stuff that I did do was not what we’ve all seen, like Rian Johnson’s first movie Brick with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. A lot of people didn’t know I did that movie until damn near 15 years later. Those were the things that kind of kept me afloat as I was trying to transition out of that. So, it’s been a journey, but not one I regret and not one I complain about.
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The first three episodes of Reasonable Doubt premiered on Hulu on Oct. 6, with other episodes streaming weekly.