‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ Cast And EPs Talk Darker Season 4, Constance Zimmer’s Addition & What Got Michael Connelly’s Thumbs Up In The Room

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It was a packed house as the cast and executive producers of the hit Netflix and A+E Studios series The Lincoln Lawyer celebrated their Season 4 premiere with a panel and party Wednesday at Deadline parent PMC’s Los Angeles headquarters. The crowd at the new PMC Theater & Terrace on hand for “The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4 Premiere Celebration” event roared over news of the legal drama’s early Season 5 renewal, which Deadline broke earlier in the day.

But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves; there’s Season 4 to discuss, and it’s an important one. The show’s protagonist, Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), is deconstructed across 10 episodes as he battles to save his own life following the Season 3 reveal that he was framed for murder.

The Q&A portion of the evening featured Garcia-Rulfo and his fellow castmembers Neve Campbell, Becki Newton, Jazz Raycole and Constance Zimmer, along with co-showrunners and executive producers Ted Humphrey and Dailyn Rodriguez.

Watch the panel here, and scroll down for photos from the panel and the post-Q&A party on the rooftop terrace.

“Mickey spent his entire career helping people and giving them this advice that now, when you’re the person in the hot seat, it feels pretty hollow. As you can imagine, I think it’s pretty universal, being accused of murder is about the worst thing that can happen to anybody. And there’s an old saying that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a lawyer,” said Humphrey, who developed Michael Connelly‘s Lincoln Lawyer book series for TV.

Added Garcia-Rulfo, “For Mickey, this season felt a little darker, heavier with him on the other side of the table. It’s also very emotional. When I was reading the episodes, I called Ted and Dailyn. There’s one that especially had me in tears. This season feels more emotional, with Mickey dealing with all that with the people that he loves beside him. As an actor, it’s more fun to go into that darker drama. Mickey is this guy who also has to take care of everything, and this season, he’s really struggling.”

New addition Constance Zimmer, who plays opposite Mickey in the courtroom as prosecutor Dana Berg in Season 4, makes sure his struggle runs deep.

“I mean, he needs somebody to kick his ass,” said Zimmer about Mickey. “I feel like he has all these yes people around him. So it was fun to be the one who was like, ‘No, I’m sorry, that’s not right.’ I feel very honored to come into a show in Season 4; everyone was so welcoming and forthcoming. It was like, ‘Yeah, we’re all supposed to hate you, but we really like you.’ I was like, ‘Okay, good, because I’m not very nice.’ You know what? I love it. I love being the woman who has to come in and give [Mickey] a run for his money.”

If “Death Row” Dana, as she has been nicknamed, thinks it will be easy to bring Mickey down, she has another thing coming — and that’s Maggie McPherson (Campbell), Mickey’s devoted friend and ex-wife with whom she shares a daughter, Hayley (Krista Warner). Maggie and Dana share a mysterious backstory; whatever it is, it doesn’t play any role in Maggie’s devotion to Mickey.

“Maggie’s feeling very defensive, and this is a complicated situation. She has a lot of fear for what might happen to Mickey, so she wants to make sure that he’s taken care of,” Campbell said.

Other teasers from the panel include Campbell and Newton discussing their characters Maggie and Lorna, respectively, forming a bond that’s beyond them being Mickey’s ex-wives, and how important it was to feature strong female relationships. Speaking of, Raycole has evolved as a character so much from the lost Izzy introduced in Season 1, and she has a new love interest to boot, Grace, played by Gigi Zumbado. There’s also a special storyline between Mickey and his mother, Elena, played by the legendary Angélica María, which Rodriguez said they’d consider exploring in a bigger way in the future.

And with the impossible one day perhaps becoming possible, Deadline posited the question of whether a crossover could ever happen between Lincoln Lawyer and another Connelly book series-turned-TV franchise, Prime Video’s Bosch.

“Let me speak for Mr. Bezos that those characters, unfortunately, at the moment, are on a different platform,” responded Humphrey.