How The Rainmaker's Lana Parrilla Is Redefining John Grisham's Iconic Character, Bruiser
Find out where Lana Parrilla drew inspiration from to make the Bruiser character in USA Network's The Rainmaker her own.
Lana Parrilla is having a blast starring in The Rainmaker, USA Network’s new legal drama that airs on Fridays at 10 pm ET/PT. She plays Jocelyn “Bruiser” Stone, a fierce and scrappy litigator who leads a team of “ambulance chasers” willing to do whatever it takes to win. Their headquarters? A former taco restaurant.
Bruiser takes recent law school graduate Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) under her wing after he’s fired from a powerhouse law firm. The two soon find themselves embroiled in a potentially high-stakes hospital case, and Rudy's ex-boss is the opposing counsel. And that's just the first episode.
If the story sounds familiar, there’s a good reason. Bruiser has graced screens and pages before. Mickey Rourke famously inhabited the role in the 1997 Francis Ford Coppola film The Rainmaker. In the film, the character was named J. Lyman "Bruiser" Stone, a part invented by John Grisham and introduced to the world in his best-selling 1995 novel of the same name.
How Lana Parrilla is putting her stamp on Bruiser
When it came to making Bruiser her own, Parrilla thought she'd have her work cut out for her. But putting a gender-bending spin on the character didn't turn out to be as tough as she thought it would.
“It was tricky, I had to be very selective,” the Once Upon A Time actress told Popternative in a recent interview, where she enthused about the incredible “creative freedom” she had to develop the role. “There are a lot of characteristics in the novel that did help give me insight into the character, and I was trying to find ways to implement those things into this feminine portrayal."
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A surprising source of inspiration
In addition to take cues from the novel, one thing that caught Parrilla’s eye was Bruiser’s wardrobe in the 1997 film.
“One of the things that I really loved about Mickey Rourke’s portrayal of Bruiser in the Coppola film was how he dressed," Parrilla said. "It was these bright colors, a flamboyant sort of handkerchief in the pocket and these big collars. And I just thought, ‘Yeah, Bruiser needs to dress a certain way.' She can’t look like she’s from a white-shoe firm. She needs to have this sort of edgy, maybe a little bit disheveled kind of approach, maybe a little bit too revealing... She uses her femininity to get what she wants, and her sexuality — which is also really cool and not in the novel or in the film portrayal."
In the movie, Bruiser disappears early in the film, following an FBI raid on his firm, and heads to the Caribbean for vacation. And in the book, the character is extremely ruthless and shady. Viewers of the TV series — and legions of Parrilla's fans — are excited about her new no-nonsense version. Killer wardrobe aside, no one knows how to rock a courtroom and shake things up like Bruiser.
New episodes of The Rainmaker premiere on USA Network every Friday evening at 10/9c before making their way to Peacock one week after they air.
