As Perry Mason wraps up its (very good!) first season, Matthew Rhys is hunkered down in a cabin in the Catskills, where the trees are plentiful and wi-fi is limited.

If Rhys’s on-screen personas veer toward the dark and brooding—his Perry Mason is a hard-boiled, hard-drinking private investigator suffering World War I flashbacks; Phillip Jennings on The Americans was a deadly and deeply conflicted Russian spy—his lively Welsh accent and mop of curls give him the charming air of a bon vivant?

GQ chatted with Rhys about the darkest moments from Perry Mason’s first season, what he thinks happened to his Americans character, and that one time he was on the last-ever episode of Columbo.

How familiar were you with the Perry Mason franchise beforehand.

So just to keep my head a little clearer, I said, "I'm just going to stick to the script, and play what's in the script." I certainly didn't go to Raymond Burr because I know I'm a kind of unconscious thief who mimics.

I think many people watching this are too young to have seen the original, so you probably did have free rein to do what you want?

Yeah, and what was refreshing was that, from the get-go, producers have said, “look, this is a re-imagining of Perry Mason, it has no bearing on Raymond Burr's Perry Mason.

Our original version was actually worse because we based it on key elements of this kidnapping that went wrong.

And then I think we collectively [couldn’t] go the whole way on it, because it was too dark.

I think if you’ve seen the kind of atrocities and horrors the World War I veterans saw, there needs to be something to capture you?

I wonder if it would have been a step too far for Mason to win, obviously: "Oh God, of course he's going to win." Or whether for her to be found guilty would have been too depressing, having invested in eight hours up until that point.

Will season two have a different case for each episode, like the original series, or is it going to focus on one crime for the duration of a season again.

I think we just have to wait and see whether you can shoot those courtroom scenes again, or whether Perry goes to prison and is solitary confinement for eight hours.

There was this one character, he was kind of like a janitor.

He came back like three or four times.

Do you ever think about what happened to your Americans character after the show ended.

I think basically they both became kind of alcoholics, and they just bickered about all the missions that went wrong, and why they went wrong, and whose fault it was because they don’t have anything better to do.

And Elizabeth’s like, “SPEAK RUSSIAN!”?

I was going to ask if you’re ever going to use your Welsh accent on television, but then I realized you did—playing the villain in the last-ever episode of Columbo.

And Peter Falk, said “I want [your character] to be a Cockney from London.” So I worked on my Cockney accent.

And he picked me up at LAX—Peter Falk picked me up when I landed at LAX!

Rhys in the final episode of Columbo.

Then he goes, "I want to rehearse right now." I was like, "Oh?

And he went [Peter Falk accent] "Where are you from?" And I said, "Oh, I'm from a place called Cardiff in Wales." He said, [Peter Falk accent] "Why don't you play him as a guy from Cardiff in Wales." And I was like, “Oh my God, Peter Falk just destroyed my Cockney accent.” So it was kind of a crushing moment for me, but yes, I did get to use my own native accent in the last-ever Columbo.

No one touches the coat." And I went, “oh, I’m so sorry.” Because he kind of had the same coat from 1969, I think, it's like his lucky coat.