Revamped, recast CBS series 'Doubt' ready for midseason premiere

The CBS drama “Doubt” casts “Grey's Anatomy” alum Katherine Heigl as Sadie Ellis, a New York defense attorney who becomes personally involved in her latest case ... and her client.

Played by Steven Pasquale (“The Good Wife,” “Rescue Me”), he's a plastic surgeon turned sudden murder suspect in the death of his girlfriend, who was killed many years earlier.

Premiering Wednesday, Feb. 15, “Doubt” also stars Elliott Gould as the chief of the law firm that employs Sadie, with Laverne Cox, Dule Hill, Dreama Walker and Kobi Libii playing lawyers as well. Executive producers and creators Tony Phelan and Joan Rater previously worked with Heigl on “Grey's Anatomy,” and the actress - who began “Doubt” while pregnant for the first time (she has two adopted daughters with singer husband Josh Kelley) - says the chance to play “a real idealist” drew her back to series work.

“Really, her first instinct is to believe the best in people. She is obviously clouded a bit by her not terribly professional feelings for this man, but she's so determined to save him and so determined to prove his innocence that she's trying to separate herself emotionally, but struggling with it. I feel like that struggle can go one of two ways: 'Oh, come on, this isn't realistic at all,' or it can feel very human. And that's what I think we're trying to do, keep it feeling very relatable and human.”

Creator-producer Rater adds, “There's a speech in the pilot that we call 'the Isaiah (Gould's character) speech,' where he talks about standing by your fellow man in his darkest hour. That is what these lawyers do, and we think they're heroes. At the same time, we were interested in the idea of telling a story about an attorney who believes in her client's innocence and ends up spending all this time with her client and developing feelings for him, and what would happen if that client was as hunky and handsome as Steven Pasquale?”

Cox's presence marks the first time a transgender character has been played by a transgender actress in a broadcast-network series. She plays Ivy League-educated lawyer Cameron Wirth.

“I think the attorneys at (the show's) Roth & Associates are freedom fighters,” Cox says. “... It's wonderful to get to play a character like that and to be a black transgender woman in that position on CBS. It feels really, really special. And she wears really cool stuff, too.”

“Doubt” originally was aimed for the 2015-16 television season, but revamping and recasting with Heigl and Pasquale resulted in its debut during the current midseason. “We're so grateful,” Rater maintains of getting a second shot at the project, “because we got to see the parts of the story that weren't working and we got to correct them.”