Toks Olagundoye, Ian Duff, and Hari Nef join the cast of the new incarnation of Steven Bochco’s legal drama L.A. Law. They join as series regulars in ABC drama pilot opposite original cast members Blair Underwood and Corbin Bernsen, who are reprising their roles as Jonathan Rollins and Arnie Becker, respectively.
Anthony Hemingway is directing the pilot from a script written by Marc Guggenheim and Ubah Mohamed.
READ: ABC Gives L.A. Law Sequel a Pilot Order — Blair Underwood to Reprise Role
In this new take on L.A. Law, McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak, the West Coast-based law firm at the heart of the original, is reinventing itself as Becker Rollins, a litigation firm specializing only in high profile, boundary-pushing and incendiary cases.
Olagundoye will play Assistant District Attorney Erika Jackson. In keeping with the Assistant District Attorney role played in the original series by Susan Day, Cecil Hoffman, and the late John Spencer, Olagundoye’s Erika Jackson is a force to be reckoned with in the courtroom, but is confronted by the role she plays in a carceral system as a deft attorney and as a woman of color.
Nef will play Alana Burke, a transgender lawyer who’s so formidable and creative in the courtroom that she makes actual headlines for her outside the box thinking.
Duff plays junior associate JJ Freeman, an idealistic hard-charger who has no problem speaking truth to power, including to his idol, Jonathan Rollins (Underwood), with whom he has fundamental disagreements about what it means to be a Black man in America in 2022.
For the L.A. Law sequel, Underwood’s character has changed from an idealistic figure to a more conservative one in the intervening years since the original. The sequel will see him clash with a millennial character named J.J. Freeman over the best path forward for the firm in effecting political and legal change.
While the focus will be on the new generation of lawyers at the firm working with Rollins, according to Deadline, other original cast members will likely make appearances should the project go to series.
Underwood, Guggenheim, Mohamed, and Hemingway will all executive produce, alongside Jesse Bochco and Dayna Bochco, the son and widow of “L.A. Law” creator Steven Bohco. Original series producer 20th Television is also behind the sequel, as well as Steven Bochco Productions.
Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, LA Law ran for eight seasons on NBC, from 1986-1994, followed by a reunion movie in 2002. The show was set in and around the fictitious Los Angeles-based law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak. Many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot-button issues. Issues such as capital punishment, abortion, racism, homophobia, sexual harassment, HIV/AIDS, and domestic violence. Underwood joined the cast in Season 2 and remained on the show until its end, earning a Golden Globe nomination.