It's probably unkind to say that "The Good Wife" is the last best hope for the broadcast networks when it comes to the Emmy drama categories, but the second-year CBS show is one of the few network offerings to challenge in a field once again likely to be dominated by the likes of HBO, AMC and Showtime. And Julianna Margulies, whose portrayal of long-suffering political wife Alicia Florrick gives the show its title, will certainly be in the thick of this year's race for Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
After a debut season in which Florrick tried to rebuild her life and her law career after her husband was caught in a very public sex scandal, Margulies' character got a lot more assertive in year two. Particularly dramatic was a season-ending string of episodes in which she dallied with a co-worker and threw her husband out of the house as his political career was showing new signs of life.
(Getty Images photo by Frazer Harrison)
The way this season ended, apparently she's not such a good wife anymore.
I find her fascinating to play, because I wish I could be as reserved in expressing myself as she is. And I think finally, after two seasons of her sort of brushing things aside, she goes a little crazy. And that's good.
But the experience of it was pretty intense. Those were the hardest episodes I've shot.
After two seasons, do you feel as if you know her better?
What's really intriguing about doing a television series is that it's a never-ending path to finding out who these characters are. As it is in real life. With films and theater you get a beginning, a middle and an end, so you can create this arc of a human character. And the challenge of television is to constantly unfold who this person is, because without that it would become one-dimensional.
It's been an incredibly cathartic experience this season. She spent a good three-quarters of the first season watching, which is what I love about her. My favorite movie is "Being There," and that's what Chauncey Gardner does: He watches. And she takes a lot in. And I think now she's reacting and she's taking charge a little bit. Whether it's taking charge in a positive way, we don’t know yet.
When a series has been on the air for a while and we start learning new things about the characters, I always wonder if the actors think, "Damn, I wish I knew that piece of information when we were starting out."
That's really interesting, because it happened to me when I was doing "ER." I had done all this research on the character for myself: What kind of a person tries to commit suicide, this and that. And I pieced together from what they gave me that she had been an only child, and at her wedding she only had her mother and her uncle, there was no father around.
