When you think of USA Network's scripted history, it’s impossible not to remember its "blue sky" era, when light dramas like Suits, Monk, Psych and White Collar drew big audiences. Once the darker Mr. Robot hit the air in 2015, heavier programming like Shooter and The Sinner followed but never struck ratings gold, leading the network away from original scripted productions.
Now the clouds are parting, as USA returns to the scripted business with a new legal drama, The Rainmaker. Based on John Grisham’s same-named 1995 bestseller, the 10-episode series has been with executive producer Michael Seitzman (Code Black, Quantico) for eight years; he’d previously set it up at CBS and then ABC Studios before partnering with Blumhouse and Lionsgate. They took the series to Versant, the spinoff housing Universal’s cable outlets including SYFY, E! and USA, where The Rainmaker premieres August 15 (streaming a week later on Peacock).
The drama follows young and poor law student Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan), who gets fired by shady lawyer Leo F. Drummond (John Slattery) on his first day at Tinley Britt, a prestigious Charleston law firm. Desperate, he takes a job at the scrappier J. Lyman Stone & Associates, working for brassy lawyer Jocelyn “Bruiser” Stone (Lana Parrilla) alongside Deck Shifflet (P.J. Byrne), an upbeat paralegal. “I love the David and Goliath story, which is kind of present in most if not all of Grisham’s books,” Seitzman says. "It’s this idea of somebody with a moral compass who’s up against a system that has lost its moral compass."
Rudy’s compass gets tested in a big way once he brings in a case involving a suspicious hospital death that is part of “a pair of converging conspiracies,” Seitzman says. “One that had this darker element, which is the real reason why this woman’s son is dead, and the other, which was a cover-up of that element by the hospital administration.” This ominous world — falling between USA’s blue-sky and darker eras — prompted Seitzman to decide he needed more than one big bad to stir the pot. “I wanted multiple villains,” he says, noting that creepy Melvin Pritcher (Dan Fogler) is “like a bear out in the woods that’s providing this other level of mischief.”
The season-long case also pits Rudy, Bruiser and Shifflet against the hospital’s representing firm, Tinley Britt, which still employs his ambitious legal-eagle girlfriend, Sarah Plankmore (Madison Iseman). Her character was only mentioned in Grisham’s book, but Seitzman recalls thinking, “Wouldn’t it be fun if we made Sarah a real character and put the case between them?” He notes that having the young couple on opposing sides of the case forces them to face numerous relationship conflicts and also puts them “in a position of having to make certain moral choices.”
Seitzman made a few other notable changes: Parrilla’s Bruiser was a man in the book, played by Mickey Rourke in the 1997 film. He also traded Memphis for Charleston, which looks more like Dublin, Ireland, where the first season shot to take advantage of the country’s tax rebates.
Grisham, an executive producer, seems happy with the adaptation. Seitzman says he received a note after the author had watched the first two episodes: “He said that he got so caught up that he forgot what parts he wrote and what parts were our invention, which was high praise. I loved that so much.”
This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #9, 2025, under the title "Courting Drama."
