Season 2 of Showtime’s “Your Honor” finds newly elected mayor Charlie Figaro (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) being pulled in several different (and potentially dangerous) directions.
His best friend Michael Desiato (Bryan Cranston), the Recent Orleans judge who broke bad, is now out of prison and dealing with a US Attorney (Olivia Delmont, played by Rosie Perez) to bring down the Baxter crime family — while implicating Charlie in his Season 1 coverup of son Adam’s hit-and-run that killed Rocco Baxter.
Meanwhile, Rocco’s father, steely crime boss Jimmy Baxter (Michael Stuhlbarg), is threatening Charlie over a waterfront development project — and Charlie has his hands full with Big Mo (Andrene Ward-Hammond), head of the Desire drug syndicate, who desires to buy a bar directly across from the plush, Baxter-owned hotel where Michael cradled his dying son within the Season 1 finale.
It’s complicated.
“Charlie is unquestionably walking a tightrope in a city where you’re going to should walk a tightrope,” Whitlock, 68, told The Post. “Charlie is a very expert politician and he’s not one to only give away every little thing. He’s willing to sit down down and listen and to be honest — as he was with the Baxters — about not only the undeniable fact that he’s got to do what the individuals who put him there want … but he schools the Baxters saying, in a way, ‘I’m not silly here — I understand how you ran this [land development scheme] and we’re going to return and check out to do it in a really honest way.’
“He’s definitely on shaky ground but, up up to now [in Season 2], he’s doing pretty good,” Whitlock said. “But once you put all this stuff together you’re a little bit surprised that Charlie is in a position to keep it together in addition to he does.”
On the core of Charlie’s story arc is his relationship with Michael, which is being severely tested. “Charlie is the sort of guy all of us wish we had — anyone who has Michael’s back, believes in him and may be very forgiving to Michael, who’s sort of like a member of the family you may’t cut loose so you discover ways to take care of them,” he said. “So when Charlie sees Michael early on in Season 2 [after he’s released from prison], it’s sort of like a reset, like let’s discover a solution to pick up the connection where we left off. Charlie is willing to forgive, though he was a little bit complicit within the setup in Season 1.
“The issue is that while Michael remains to be that actually good friend he can allow himself to trust, it will probably be dangerous because Michael will not be being honest with Charlie early on … and that becomes a little bit disturbing.”
“Your Honor” was envisioned as a one-season, close-ended series, but its popularity and rankings success — it was the highest-rated recent series in Showtime history — merited its return which, as Whitlock identified, allowed viewers the chance to learn so way more about Charlie’s personal and skilled lives.
“I at all times found Charlie to be a really complicated character; nothing is ever cut-and-dried with him,” Whitlock said. “In Season 1, you actually don’t know much about Charlie — where he lives, if he’s dating anybody or if he’s married. He’s type of like a presence.
“But I find the character about as complicated as the town of Recent Orleans and that excites me,” he said. “There’s a mystery there in some unspecified time in the future that … hopefully gets fleshed out and to me it adds to the show, to the mystique of Charlie and it adds to the town of Recent Orleans.”
Whitlock said he based Charlie’s look — ever-present bowtie and hat — on Willie Brown, a Northern California politician who was mayor of San Francisco from 1996-2004.
“I figure [Charlie] is in Recent Orleans with things like Mardi Gras and brilliant colours and all of the flashiness of that,” he said. “Willie Brown wore the identical sort of stuff as Charlie Figaro — he was impeccably dressed and … was the flashiest, coolest guy.
“So after I got the job [as Charlie] I wanted him to appear to be Willie Brown … not a lot flashy, I just wanted him to be clean, for people to know that when he walks right into a room he’s going to face out … and by being in Recent Orleans it really works — you already know where Charlie Figaro is.
“It speaks volumes as to who he’s and what he does.”
“Your Honor” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on Showtime.
