The Rainmaker: Madison Iseman Explains Sarahs Big Decision With Rudy

Sarah Plankmore (Madison Iseman) has been on a roller coaster ride throughout The Rainmaker‘s second season so far. Her professional reputation is tarnished by the Great Benefits serial killer cover-up scandal; her ex, Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan), is being ice-cold with her whenever she tries to apologize to him; and now, she has legal trouble looming for herself, too — all while she tries to reignite her ailing career. On Friday’s (November 6) newest episode, though, even as she continues trying to piece together her career by working for the embattled powerhouse Amanda Vonn (Merle Dandridge), she puts her neck on the line for Rudy in a huge moment. Warning: The following post contains spoilers for The Rainmaker Season 2 Episode 4, “Numerosity.”

The episode sees Rudy, Bruiser (Lana Parrilla), and Deck (P.J. Byrne) move to get class certification for Victor Saffredes (Asher DeLand) and the other juveniles who’ve been preyed upon by the judicial system. Amanda, and by extension Sarah, rush the matter and convince the judge to demand proof on the matter of numerosity — if they can’t produce 40 client names right away, they won’t get approved.

That’s not their only move, either; Sarah also works with Amanda’s sassy assistant to get some insider intel from an unsuspecting guard about how their list came together, and they discover that Victor has assembled the list himself. This, Amanda says gleefully, can get Rudy into major trouble with the judge. Sarah, who is also having to navigate spying on her boss under threat of indictment and filling her boss in on those very same dangers, puts it all on the line to warn Rudy not to use the list. But he does so anyway, and what results is a fiery rebuke from the judge that very nearly results in being referred for disciplinary action by the bar. Luckily, Victor himself testifies on his decision to recruit fellow victims, which convinces the judge to give Rudy & Co. one more chance to round up a new list, without the current names on it, within a week.

Considering how hard Sarah has had to fight to even have this opportunity with Amanda, and everything she’s facing in the way of her own legal blowback, why does she take a chance to warn Rudy? TV Insider caught up with Madison Iseman to find out that and more!

At the end of Season 1, Sarah ended up on top. She had her office, and everyone else was getting in trouble without her. And then this season, we see the consequences are coming. Her reputation’s in the gutter. Her career prospects are down, and then obviously there’s this new looming threat of indictment. So, in between seasons, did you expect any of that to be ahead?

Madison Iseman: No. To be honest, I got the pilot episode, and I was a bit just like, “Really?” I think, in my head, I just had a fully different idea of where Sarah was going to start off in the new season. And I trust our writers so much. I mean, they do such a beautiful job with our work. But I remember when we were getting the first episode of Season 2, just standoff alone, just the one, it ended with her at rock bottom, she apologizes to Rudy, and I was just like, “What?!” I called the showrunner, Michael [Seitzman], and I was like, “What? That’s where we start?” But to be honest, it lays down such a nice place for Sarah to start this next journey that she’s going to be on. And I wish they would have sent me the first episode with the next three along with it because it makes so much sense as the story carries on. But I’m not gonna lie, my initial reaction to the very first episode, I was a little bummed because I was ready for Sarah to kind of be on top. But I think it is really important, with where she ends up in the end of Season 2, that she started that way.

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You mentioned the confrontation with Rudy. Throughout this season, we’ve seen her already put her hat in hand to Rudy more than once. What do you think it does to her psyche when she’s being sincere, it seems, and then he’s just cold and rejecting her.

Listen, I think she deserves it. I think she made choices last season for her own reasons. I think the morally gray is always a theme that we talk about throughout this entire show, and Sarah consistently lives there. And so she made decisions that she thought were the best for her last year, and unfortunately, they weren’t the prettiest, necessarily. And it’s funny, too. On the day, we filmed many versions of that closing argument. I think we filmed some versions where Sarah was a bit more hesitant to get this information. There were some where she was pretty ruthless, and it’s always interesting to see where it lies after, on the editing floor, after they’re done putting the episode together. Sometimes it’s a shock for the actor, too. You give so many different performances and choices, and it’s something that I think she was really looking out for herself, and so I think this time around, everything Rudy’s giving her is a bit expected. I think she deserves it. I think she put him in a really, really tough place. I think she knows that, too. She’s a smart girl. She knows what she’s doing. And I think for her to even get up there and apologize to Rudy, it takes a lot for her to do that because she knows why she she knows why she did it, but she also knows Rudy’s the best person she knows, and he does deserve the apology. But it’s definitely tough to hear, for sure, and it kind of continues throughout the first few episodes.

We also get to see in these first few episodes a little bit more of Sarah’s home life and her relationship with her parents. Her dad was always in the picture, but you’re actually getting into the home this time. How fun was that for you to explore, especially with the mother and that tension?

I think over everything, it made Sarah feel more human. These were all themes and ideas and things that I had talked about with our showrunner off-set last season, the things that were happening behind the scenes in Sarah’s life that the audience didn’t really get a peek at. I think we meet my father. It’s like one episode in Season 1, and it’s a pretty brief conversation. But that at least lays down the groundwork of where her father’s consistently pushing her, and it is nice for people to get more of an understanding of maybe why she makes the choices she does, where her head’s at, how much pressure she is actually in. And then also, at the same time, it’s I think a relationship with her mother is such a nice parallel to the father, where her mom even sometimes has a hard time standing up to her own father. The father just really takes control of everything and wants his life to look a certain way. And Sarah is always sort of trying to make him happy, trying to make everyone else around her happy. And I think she’s taken on a lot of bad habits from her father. I think she’s competitive, and she gets that honestly from him. And her mom, she plays such a great role throughout the season, too, and she has more moments. She ends up being one of the close people for Sarah and sort of her sounding board and one of the people who’s always the angel on her shoulder, if that makes sense.

Sure does. Earlier this season, we got to see Sarah face off with Rudy in court with the stepdad, and I was surprised a little bit, given her confession about off-ramps and things, that she kind of took that same “nuts and sluts”-style approach. Do you think you know that’s her going back to the dark side, or did she just really not know that this stepdad was scum?

I think at this moment, and we talked a lot about it, I think what really happens, I think she’s completely blindsided. I think she’s finally — I mean, you have to think about it too. We only really see her going to one other law firm to try and get a job. She gets rejected. In my head, I imagine she’s gone to so many meetings, can’t get a job anywhere. I think she’s pretty down on herself, and then she’s such an admirer of Amanda Vonn. She gets this phone call, and I think that’s always that little voice in Sarah’s head where it’s like, “Do it, do it. That’s what you need to head towards.” So I think she’s willing to do whatever it takes to impress Amanda, but then quickly — it’s so shortly before she walks into that courtroom, she finds out that she’s going head to head against Rudy. And I think she’s a survivor. I think she knows what it takes to get what needs to be done done. So I think she goes in there ready to win the case. She knows what she needs to do to win this pre-trial motion, and unfortunately, it’s just against Rudy, and she knows what she’s done. But I think at that point, she’s sort of like, “Honestly, screw all of you. Screw you, Amanda. Screw you, Rudy. I’m gonna take care of myself in this moment and make myself look as good as possible.” And then she goes, and she faces Amanda herself, and she says, “Is that the only reason you hired me? You thought I would shake him?” Then she’s like, “You’re wrong. You’re wrong. You can’t shake Rudy. If anything, you just made it 100 times worse.” So I think at that moment, it’s kind of like when you’re at rock bottom, how much further can you go? So I think she saw that situation as, “I’m already here, so I might as well just double down. I can be the bad guy one more time and win this motion.”

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We also get to see John Slattery return as Leo Drummond for a scene. I don’t know if there’s more to come, but I really enjoyed that exchange. What was it like to reunite with him, and what do you think she took away the most from that conversation that they had?

He plays such a great role this season, and some of my favorite scenes are with John — I’m always so happy to have him back. I think he’s just so good at what he does. It’s always like a masterclass in acting when you get to work face to face with him, and we have fun together, too. We have fun every day at work. I think he starts to become a mentor in a way for Sarah, and I think she seeks it out because there’s probably a world where it could be very black and white, but Sarah loves the gray. She lives in the gray. She’s like, “How can I do good, but then also still get what I want?” And Leo sort of represents that entire [ethos]. That’s who he is as a human, and I think over everything, he respects her. And he even says in that scene when we’re walking together in his garden, he was like, “There’s still hope for you,” And I think those little tiny kernels of hope and respect and belief when she’s constantly, everyone else around her is kind of telling her, “You’re terrible. You can’t do it. Do better. Be a better person. Be a better lawyer.” Leo’s sort of the one person in her life who’s like, “I believe in you. I think you’re the sh*t.” So of course he’s gonna understand, and she’s probably gonna take everything he says to heart. Whether that ends up being a really good thing or really bad thing. I think that unfolds over the rest of the season, but he’s smart, too. I think he knows the things he needs to tell Sarah in order to get her to listen to him, and I think in return, she needs someone to help guide her through this morally gray area and how to end up on top of it.

One relationship that I’m really enjoying in this season is between Sarah and the assistant for Amanda. She insults her quite a bit in this episode, especially when she makes a suggestion about why she got hired. Does she find that insulting, or is it a little bit maybe empowering just to have that kind of nemesis?

I mean, as Madison, I love Megan’s character. It’s one of my favorite characters of the season. I think it’s so, so fresh. It’s such a fresh take on a woman to just be so rash and to just say whatever’s on her mind. I think it’s the antithesis of Sarah. I think she’s everything Sarah would never be. So you put the two of them together, and I think they’re just at odds completely from the beginning. Throughout the season, I’m excited for you to see sort of where their relationship develops because opposites sometimes attract. You really never know, but no, I think in these first few episodes, I think Megan represents Sarah’s hell. I think if hell was a human, it would be Megan, and I think she thinks it’s embarrassing. But it’s interesting to watch it unfold. I think she’s such a nice person to include in Sarah’s ether and to watch Sarah navigate these different types of personalities.

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So we obviously have this thing going on with Ronan, especially this episode. It seems like this is the one situation where she doesn’t know really what to do, and I like that word he used in the church scene where he says, “You’re an exorcist.” Can you just describe what that means exactly, and where’s her mind at? Because she’s going back and forth, and I can’t tell who she’s actually loyal to here.

And that’s on purpose. OK, we talked a lot about where Sarah should be at these certain moments in the show, and it was complicated. It was really hard to try to carve out the path and where we wanted to take her, and it can be played many, many ways. But it was important for Michael and I to sort of keep everyone second guessing, sort of, what Sarah’s thinking and where she’s going to go. And I think at this point, when she meets with Ronan again, I think she’s really realizing that she’s in a bit over her head. It’s way bigger than she ever imagined it was going to be. I think she thought this was going to be some play both sides, give people what they want, come out on the other end — which is kind of what she did in Season 1 as well. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening this time. She’s being expected to do a whole lot more.

As far as being an exorcist — the choice of wording is so good. It’s so good. We love our writers. I think for the first time, it’s putting a level in her head of how big it actually is. Because I think, for her, she’s always on the outside, so she can see everything from a distance, but nothing is really affecting her personally. So for him to bring it to her in those words, I think it makes it hit home just so much harder and feel so big. I think that’s kind of the first time where she can look in the word and sort of be like, “What am I doing? Can I do this? I don’t know if I can. I do this.” And it’s such a nice moment, and it is the back and forth. We have a lot more to go. There’s a lot more to happen in the next few episodes, but right now, at this moment, you are not supposed to know exactly what she’s thinking.

Well, well done! Mission accomplished. I like the scene also where Amanda dresses her down, quite literally speaking, and then that kind of parallels with what Megan does at the bar, unbuttoning her shirt and making her kind of dig into sex appeal to get her way. She doesn’t respond to it with any sense of humiliation or anything. It’s almost like she feels defiant in those moments.

And I think she is. I think Amanda represents… I think she’s inspired by her. I think she’s enthralled by Amanda, and it’s a game. It’s always been a game. I think it’s a different game that she played with the boys, with Leo and Brad and Keeley, but I don’t think she’s naive to the game at all. I just think, in her head, she knows it’s going to be a completely different ball game. I think she’s constantly watching Amanda, and she knows what she has to do. So I think in that moment in particular, it’s like getting the physical activity of getting there in front of someone; it just means, “This is all of me. I’ve literally have nothing to hide.” And it’s just a physical representation of that. And I think in that moment, she knows that’s what she needs to do. And instead of being humiliated, which we talked about on the day, we’re like, “Is there a humiliation there? Is there an embarrassment?” But I think what was a stronger choice was the stare-down… We’d be like, “OK, my clothes are off. Now take off yours.” And I think that’s that was the energy that was supposed to lie in that scene. And then I think the scene with Megan in the bar, I think that’s also just our writers write women so, so well, and there’s a whole new group of women this season who everyone is so good, and they’re so dynamic. And listen, I think we sort of play on what it’s like to be a female in a man’s world, and I think that’s sort of a taste of that moment. I think Megan knows that world so well. Where I think Sarah possibly doesn’t see it the same way necessarily. She’s a bit naive to that. And it’s kind of the first moment, too, where you see, “OK, maybe Megan is helping out Sarah in a way, and there could be something there.”

In the last little bit of the episode, when Sarah tries to warn Rudy that she shouldn’t use the list… I just wonder, why does she decide to help him, knowing it could jeopardize her own career?

She knows that she’s done it for Rudy, and I think that same thing. There’s nothing to lose. She’s at the bottom at this point, and I think it’s all fair and fun and games until someone’s about to lose their law license, and that’s what he’s up against. I like to think of Season 1. These kids are fresh out of law school. They’re learning. They’re young. They’re a bit naive to the world of law, and they’re sophomores this year. So I just think there’s more to lose; I think the stakes are higher, and I think as soon as Amanda says he could lose his law license, I think that would be Sarah’s biggest fear in her life. So I think she feels a duty in that way to save him. It’s one thing to try to win the case; it’s another thing to set him up to actually fail in life and lose his license. So I think that’s one of the rare moments that you see Sarah actually make a good decision. And unfortunately, it took the super high stakes to get her there.

The Rainmaker, Fridays, 10/9c, USA Network