Nevermind 'The Americans' — 'Perry Mason' star Matthew Rhys is hoping to make his own Welsh 'Braveheart' one day

• Matthew Rhys stars in the HBO reboot of the beloved legal drama "Perry Mason."
• Rhys spoke with Insider about the show, his connection to the character, and some of his favorite extracurricular activities.

If Matthew Rhys has any regrets, it may be buying a wooden boat six years ago. The Ernest Hemingway aficionado was sipping whiskey and surfing eBay one evening when he stumbled on a listing for a 1930s Wheeler Playmate for just $30,000 — the same kind of yacht Hemingway once owned and used to fish off the warm waters of Key West, Florida. It seemed like a dream opportunity.

But then the Welsh actor's personal passion project ballooned into a money pit, requiring almost three years, tens of thousands of dollars, and countless hours of manual labor to restore.

"If there's one thing I learned, I do not ever need again a personal passion project that takes that amount of effort, hours or time, or strain on my family," he told Insider over the phone from his Brooklyn home, which he shares with wife Keri Russell and their three kids.

Rhys now lets small groups — mostly a mix of Hemingway and Rhys fans — charter the boat for cruises around New York Harbor. He occasionally appears as a deckhand, serving cheese plates to passengers and making mai tais, daiquiris, and mojitos.

For most, though, it's easier to catch the Emmy award-winning actor nowadays in HBO's reboot of "Perry Mason," where he plays the show's titular character, a damaged war veteran-turned-defense attorney with his own righteous sense of justice.

Rhys describes Perry Mason as a lawyer who's finding his way

"He just has a very simplistic notion of what's right and what's wrong and how you go about, you know, making sure whatever is wrong is righted," Rhys said.

Season two picks up six months after Perry's client Emily Dodson, who's accused of murdering her one-year-old son, gets off on a mistrial. This season, the attorney gets sucked into a case defending a pair of Mexican brothers charged with murdering Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist Brooks McCutcheon (Tommy Dewey).

Production for the second season of the show began in January 2022 and wrapped seven months later, employing a crew of roughly 200 to recreate 1930s LA with shooting locations spanning Santa Clarita, Pasadena, and San Pedro, California.

The show returned in early March with some changes: Michael Begler and Jack Amiel, creators of "The Knick," were brought in as showrunners. With Perry's origin story now out of the way, season two relies more on its protagonists — Perry and his colleague Della Street (Julie Rylance) — and explores how Perry's chosen profession as a defense attorney plays to his strengths and weaknesses.

"I kept reminding myself that Perry is finding his way as a trial lawyer — it's only been six months," Rhys said. "He's not battle-weary or battle-hardened. What I tried to do is put him in a place where it's not some polished performance."

As one of HBO's high-budget prestige dramas, "Perry Mason" soars. The show is a handsome, absorbing noir that's hard to shake and sly enough to savor. Part of this reboot's appeal is how it balances the past and the present. Its setting, pace, and style all evoke seductive aspects of a bygone era, while its serialized elements and unflinching honesty — in its portrayal of people's lives, in its view of a broken institution — cater to a modern audience's sensibilities. This reimagined "Perry Mason" isn't a case-of-the-week anymore, but one case per season. Instead of neatly wrapping everything up in an hour, the show chooses cases that raise compelling, sometimes haunting, questions about America's criminal justice system.

Without giving too much away, season two ends with Perry facing the consequences of his actions. He's disregarded the law, is caught, and is punished. It's a cliffhanger that leaves you wondering what the character will do next.

"I think he'd have to really take stock of what's happened because if he thinks that's the price of ultimate justice, where does it leave you?" Rhys says. "Are you willing to sacrifice that much every time there's a trial or if the system is that corrupt? Is it even worth it?"

Rhys' colleagues describe him as a 'dream scene partner'

As much as Rhys is seen as an actor's actor, he's also quick to crack jokes — something you'd know if you caught "The Wine Show" in 2016. The series about, well, wine, saw him romp around Italy drinking with his friend Matthew Goode. (The two first met on the World War I flick "Deathwatch" and became friends after working together on the 2013 BBC miniseries "Death Comes to Pemberley.") He also showed off his lighter side earlier this year, appearing in the film "Cocaine Bear" as Andrew Thornton, a former cop-turned-drug smuggler who dumps about 200 pounds of cocaine out of a plane over Georgia.

But Rhys usually gravitates towards gritty, dramatic characters: a successful gay lawyer in the family drama series "Brothers & Sisters," a Russian spy in the period drama "The Americans."

"I'm not even sure how that's evolved," admits Rhys, who honed his acting chops at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He says he was attracted to playing Mason because he "feels so different to me. He has a very-old fashioned romantic notion of justice, and he kind of lives by that very simple rule, which is why he always gets caught up in the nonsense of the judicial system."

Begler, who was a "massive" fan of Rhys and "The Americans," recalls first meeting the actor on a Zoom call before production of season two started. The two worked closely to perfect the show's courtroom scenes, including the trial's closing argument, which underwent several rewrites.

"What I love about Matthew is he brings a sense of confidence but also humility," Begler says.

"He is so expressive in his eyes that sometimes he can do things without words. He can play a scene where he's so commanding, but the next scene, he can also play vulnerability. And I think that is, to me, a true gift of an actor who can do both those things."

Rylance describes Rhys as a "dream of a scene partner," a kind, encouraging actor with an unwavering desire to find the heart of a scene. Off-camera, she says Rhys was always the first to bound into the trailers in the morning, the first to greet everybody with a grin and gently hurry everyone to set.

"Matthew's curious about what it means to be human, what it means to explore the human condition, and I think that curiosity is so compelling," she explains. "I think that it is that sort of almost Shakespearean quality to him, of someone who's holding sort of bounding joy and deep sorrow within the same breath. It's my favorite quality in an actor."

Rhys and his wife Keri Russell follow a 'hard and fast rule' to maintain equilibrium in their relationship

Rhys' versatility landed him an Emmy for lead actor in a drama series for his star turn in "The Americans." The drama, which ran from 2013 to 2018, featured Rhys and Russell as Russian spies who infiltrate America and raise a family. (Rhys previously told Forbes in March he was open to possibly revisiting "The Americans.") In real life, the two actors met over 20 years ago in a parking lot after a kickball party hosted by Jennifer Grey and eventually fell in love on the set of the show. They now share three kids, including their youngest Sam, who they welcomed in 2016.

Parenting is a juggling act for Rhys and Russell. Since "The Americans" ended, they've lived by a "hard and fast" rule that has served them well.

"When one of us works, the other one doesn't," Rhys explains. "There's always one balancing parent around. We've always tried to adhere to that."

When Rhys shot the second season of "Perry Mason" in Southern California, Russell stayed behind, and when Russell filmed her upcoming Netflix series, "The Diplomat," in the UK, Rhys looked after the children. The couple also managed to sync their schedules to appear in episodes of the new Apple TV+ series, "Extrapolations," an all-star affair with Meryl Streep, Kit Harrington, Sienna Miller, and Marion Cotillard about the long-term effects of climate change.

The odds of "Perry Mason" getting renewed are high. Season two has been largely well-received by critics, who pointed to Rhys' riveting performance as an essential ingredient to the show's success.

While he's content to don Perry's worn fedora for another season, if Rhys could have his way, he would get what sounds suspiciously like another personal passion project made: a film about the overthrow of Edward II, the first English "Prince of Wales," in the 14th century. It's a plot that, for better or worse, resembles Mel Gibson's "Braveheart."

"When 'Braveheart' came out, I remember being very depressed, because I was like, 'Oh shit, Mel Gibson has beaten us to it — he's got the story out,'" Rhys recalls. "Edward II was doing the same to Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. So there's basically a Welsh 'Braveheart' that I would love to do that I've been trying to get made for the last 12 years. But every time [any] one reads it, they just go, 'Well, this is 'Braveheart.'' I go, 'I know! But it happened to us, too!'