[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Reasonable Doubt, Season 3 Episode 4, “Friend or Foe.”]
Reasonable Doubt continues to raise the stakes and drama for lawyer Jax Stewart (Emayatzy Corinealdi) and her family, including husband Lewis (McKinley Freeman), who were forced to face the consequences of keeping a major secret from their children in the latest installment, “Friend or Foe.”
As fans saw earlier in the season, Lewis closed the book on his relationship with Toni (Tristan Cunningham) after they lost their baby, Jaden. Conceived while he was on a break with Jax, he found out Toni was pregnant once he’d reconciled with his wife, and it led the Stewarts to consider their next move. While Jax agreed that Lewis should play an active role in his son’s life, the baby didn’t survive after being born early, and it was agreed that Lewis and Jax’s children, Naima (Aderinsola Olabode) and Spenser (Thaddeus J. Mixson), didn’t need to know about their almost-sibling.
Disney / Parrish Lewis
That all changed when Naima and Spenser discovered baby clothes in their home, proving to Naima that her friend, Toni’s daughter, wasn’t lying when she’d suggested they were almost siblings, and that the baby who died belonged to their dad. Needless to say, Naima and Spenser were upset by the lack of honesty and transparency within their family unit, but how do the Stewarts move forward?
“One of the things that I think is cool about the story… It’s like, how do you reconcile resolving a huge problem only to create another one?” Freeman tells TV Insider. “Jax and Lewis [are] being forced to be honest about how they see themselves in the world and who they want to be for their family and one another.”
While the couple may be on a strong footing for the most part, this revelation has shaken up their kids’ lives. “Something that was really important for me in terms of the story, specifically with Naima, she’s a young impressionable teenager, and it was very important that we allowed her to have the space to have her emotions,” Corinealdi points out.
And while Jax and Lewis let their kids have space, her mother, Mama Lu (Pauletta Washington), allows her deadbeat dad, Eddie (Richard Brooks), to wander into their lives, sparking a debate among Jax and Lewis that Corinealdi and Freeman are teasing further in the full video interview above.
In the meantime, Jax is also dealing with her court case representing former child star, Ozzie (Kyle Bary), as he stands accused of killing his girlfriend, Wendy (Rumer Willis). But as viewers discovered through therapy sessions, Ozzie was abused as a child, having sex when he was underage with someone in the industry.
The end of Episode 4 reveals that the woman is none other than his manager, Monica (Brandee Evans). When it came to dealing with the heavy topics, Bary tells TV Insider, “I think the plight of a child star is something we’re all more interested in now because we’ve seen… so many stories or books have come out. And I think it’s really wonderful and special and important that we’re exploring it in this way with a narrative like this.”
See what else Bary is sharing in the full segment, above, alongside Corinealdi, Freeman, Joseph Sikora, and Angela Grovey, and don’t miss what’s next for the series as Reasonable Doubt Season 3 continues.
Reasonable Doubt, Season 3, Thursdays, Hulu