Reasonable Doubt, the Kerry Washington-produced legal drama on Hulu, has been one of the must-see shows of 2022, with Emayatzy Corinealdi playing the badass but problematic attorney Jax Stewart. Sexy and polished but a little bit hood, Jax defends the accused with questionable tactics while also tending to a messy personal life, prompting fans to tweet their shock and surprise at storylines in ways that harken back to the good old days of Scandal or Power.

Jax is a shark on the job, but stumbles in relationships: she’s estranged from her husband Lewis (McKinley Freeman), fails to connect with her pre-teen son, and makes really questionable choices with her one-time client Damon (Michael Ealy). Then there’s her mom: Mama Lu, played by industry veteran Pauletta Washington, who is complicated, to say the least. More often than not, the “toxic mother-in-law” trope has the mom in the scenario treating her child’s partner badly; think, for example of Mama Joyce of Real Housewives of Atlanta perpetually throwing shade at Kandi Burruss’ husband, Todd. Reasonable Doubt flips that script, having Mama Lu be less than nurturing sometimes to her own daughter.

“The relationship between she and Jax is very complicated,” Washington tells BET.com. “And I think she is fighting the fact that she created some of the tension between them.”

Tension built all season as Mama Lu not only meddled in Jax’s marriage, usually taking Lewis’ side, but thwarted Jax’s plans to reunite with her dad, too. But a bombshell revelation delivered via flashbacks in the season’s penultimate episode took Jax and Lu’s already toxic bond to nuclear status: fans learned Jax’s stepfather Paul (Chris Doubek) had been grooming Jax as a teen and when Jax finally confronted her in the present day, Mama Lu didn’t handle it well.  “I think she's a little flirtatious,” Washington says of Mama Lu’s way of “helping” Jax and Lewis mend their marriage. “As a whole she really wants Lewis and Jax to be tight, for their children. But she has her ways.” Asked if she thinks Mama Lu is deliberate in the ways she shades Jax, or just oblivious, Washington takes a moment then says, “I think a little of both.”

Playing a divisive diva on a buzzy hit like Reasonable Doubt is a good look for Washington, who’s been acting since the late 1970s. It was on the set of the 1977 TV movie Wilma where she met her husband, Denzel. Suffice it to say that Reasonable Doubt, which makes heavy allusions to the classic Jay-Z album of the same name and finds its characters code-switching and liberally using n***a in a way that’s almost lyrical, reflects values of a generation that’s much different than that of Washington, now 72. The mother of four (her son John David was in Malcolm & Marie with Zendaya) says she loves Reasonable Doubt’s modern energy––including the way the characters talk. “Well, at first, it was a little shocking,” she says. “But I have young children. And I am very much involved with the youth culture, and I love it because they keep me young. I'm not jaded.”

She says Mama Lu and Jax’s relationship allows people to see and talk about issues that used to be more taboo. “I don’t think the show could’ve existed in years past. And if it did it would not be as profound because there'd be a lot of issues that we could not be as verbal about.” She says she knew a lot of Mama Lus in her lifetime and drew inspiration from lots of people including her own mom, her grandmother, her aunties, and younger women too. Mama Lu isn’t a villain to Washington, but someone who probably had to also handle tumultuous relationships and is doing the best she can as she knows how. “I think she's a loving woman, a smart woman. She loves her daughter. And she's proud of her daughter because she's very accomplished.”

Indeed––Jax is really that girl, at least at work. Her love life could use some tweaking, but hey, whose is perfect? And Jax’s troubles holding down a relationship frankly kinda makes her like a lot of people of her generation and younger. For a lot of millennial, Gen Y and Gen Z kids, Denzel and Pauletta––married 39 years––have a kind of longevity they only know from fairy tales. So what would Washington tell Jax and other young folk is the key to making it last? “Everybody always asks me and my husband, what is there is the secret,” she says. “The only thing I can tell anybody is that what has sustained us is our faith, our belief in God, and our willingness to try to obey that. And that checks us at the door.”