Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, the 44-year-old Mexican actor who brings cool confidence and quick-thinking to The Lincoln Lawyer's criminal defense ace Mickey Haller, sat down with Newsweek on Tuesday to talk about what's ahead in Season 4.
The last season ended with an intense cliffhanger as the police found former client Sam Scales dead in the back of Haller's iconic blue Lincoln convertible. For three seasons, Mickey has made a career out of slipping other people out of trouble, talking them down from the ledge and out of the system's grip.
But now, in Season 4, which drops Thursday, Mickey is on the other side of the bars.
"His life is on the line and he's on the other side of the table now defending himself," Garcia-Rulfo said, adding, "The stakes are higher."
Garcia-Rulfo credits Matthew McConaughey, who played Mickey Haller in the 2011 film adaptation of Michael Connelly's book, with a "beautiful" description of the lead character: someone who "dances in the rain without getting wet," a line he says became a guiding image for his own interpretation of Haller.
As the protagonist trades tailored suits for jail jumpsuits, "which was very comfortable for me," Garcia-Rulfo said, the season "feels emotionally heavier," as Haller is more directly in the line of fire. As an actor, Garcia-Rulfo says it was more "fun" to explore that deeper, more emotional side of Mickey.
Garcia-Rulfo acknowledged that Mickey sometimes blurs the ethical and moral lines, saying, "I think that's what it makes him very interesting, that he always goes a little outside the box or outside the law to get his way."
He said that Mickey is a bit tailored to him, with the writers considering Garcia-Rulfo's "essence" and personality when shaping the episodes.
Ahead of the Thursday release of Season 4, which is expected to largely follow Connelly's book, The Law of Innocence, The Lincoln Lawyer was signed for Season 5.
Garcia-Rulfo has just started reading the first episode of the forthcoming 5th season, with filming set to start next month. He says he's both excited and nervous to start filming again.
Garcia-Rulfo had to put in some serious hours learning legalese and Haller's technical lines, which often come in the form of long monologues in the courtroom or to clients and co-workers, telling Newsweek, "I have all the legal terms in my house and what it means. It's hard to keep up."
"I keep telling Netflix, who thought it was a good idea to put a Mexican as a lawyer, but I'm grateful for it," he said, laughing.
He noted that "it's a battle for me because it is a second language and then all the huge monologues and the legal terms." But, nonetheless, Garcia-Rulfo has mastered the skill and made a splash as Mickey, crediting his ability to memorize the lines and terms to constant practice and muscle memory.
Garcia-Rulfo laughed, remembering that there were days on set when he would mess up some lines and would curse in English. The extras on set, many of whom played jury members, surprised him at the end of a season with a T-shirt printed with some of the expletives he'd repeated most often.
The actor told Newsweek he hopes his final "wrap gift" from the show is the iconic blue Lincoln convertible, which he says he loves but can be a pain to drive during filming because "everybody starts looking and you have to reshoot the scene."
Though he comes from a family of dentists in Guadalajara, Mexico, Garcia-Rulfo pursued his dream of becoming an actor.
"When I was young, this movie Amores Perros came out," he said. The Alejandro González Iñárritu film, which featured Gael Garcia Bernal "touched so many Mexicans. It was like the beginning of another good Mexican era in cinema."
The film, which received international recognition, gave Garcia-Rulfo hope, as it offered another pathway than telenovelas, which he says he never liked much.
His father, he says, "loved cinema. He was a fanatic," who made home videos and showed projections of them at the family's ranch in Mexico. "Because of him, he opened the doors to this world to me," he said.
Garcia-Rulfo said it depends on the project, but he tends to prefer acting in films over a series, largely because of the creative process. In film, he said, "You have more space, more time to explore the character, to really go deep into that scene." Whereas television, by contrast, "moves so fast; there's no time for like really okay what do I want in this scene?"
Outside his acting work, Garcia-Rulfo also spends time on photography—a field he once imagined pursuing professionally as documentary photographer for National Geographic—he told Newsweek. "I love photography and I shoot on film most of the time."
He also—like Mickey in the show—plays tennis in his free time.
But—unlike Mickey—Garcia-Rulfo isn't much of a foodie. He said he'd take something sweet over the savory spreads that show up in episode after episode. "I hate it because you do so many takes and you have to be eating all the time," he said about The Lincoln Lawyer set.
Garcia-Rulfo often goes back to Mexico, visiting family and friends and—of course—the ranch.
The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4 premieres February 5 on Netflix.