Reasonable Doubt is back and keeping viewers on their toes as Jax Stewart ( Emayatzy Corinealdi ) takes on her friend Shanelle Tucker’s ( Shannon Kane ) self-defense case after she supposedly bludgeoned her abusive husband JT (Christopher Mychael Watson) to death. But Jax isn’t doing it alone as a new face to the firm, Corey Cash ( Morris Chestnut ) joins the team. Along with navigating a new professional dynamic in the wake of this addition, Jax is still working on her marriage to Lewis ( McKinley Freeman ), and trying to cope with the traumas inflicted on her in Season 1 at the hands of Damon ( Michael Ealy ).
It isn’t an easy journey as Jax barely has time to accept the things that have happened recently before she’s focused on trying to defend her friend Shanelle. Disney/Crystal Power “They have just a bit of a tenuous relationship at times,” Corinealdi notes of Jax and Shanelle’s friendship, which was rocky even in Season 1. “There’s always those little things.
And so I think that Raamla Mohamed [our showrunner] has set up this story in this way where it would be the friend that you have the most tension with at times, who is at this point of need,” Corinealdi adds. “And it also happens that it’s at Jax’s lowest time.” Part of that struggle is coming to terms with the abuse Shanelle faced in her marriage with JT.
“In Season 2 there’s a whole different type of trauma that we’re dealing with...
It’s abuse that kind of hides in plain sigh.