Robert King, showrunner and executive producer of “The Good Fight,” says the upcoming CBS All Access drama will aim to reflect the country under President Donald Trump.
“I think this election gave us a spine,” King said at the Television Critics Association winter press tour on Monday. “‘The Good Wife’ was really about the Obama years … This kind of gives shape to a new show.”
King said the drama, a spin-off of the Julianna Margulies-led “The Good Wife,” had to be re-worked following Trump’s surprise victory last November. Only the pilot had been written before the election, and even that required some rewriting.
But that doesn’t mean that “The Good Fight” will simply be anti-Trump. It will be a more nuanced look at what life is like once “things change” under a Trump administration, King said.
“‘The Good Wife’ was sort of — if you looked for it — a satire of a liberal mindset,” he said. “So it’s not just anti-Trump, but it’s also a look at how liberals are reacting. It’s more interesting to me to see how the culture changes.”
Michelle King, who co-created and also serves as executive producer on the drama, added that even the characters on the series will reflect different political perspectives.
“More than the show being political, we have characters who are political,” she said. “What we have tried to do is to present all of our characters as intelligent human beings, whether they have conservative political views or liberal political views.”
Some of the scenes in the pilot which were shot before the election will have different resonance in 2017, the show’s cast and creators said. Particularly, one scene featuring a prop photo of Christine Baranski’s character and Hillary Clinton.
“When Diane has to leave her office forever because she’s out of a job, and she takes that photo of Hillary Clinton, that scene was shot the night before the election,” Baranski said. “I imagine it’s going to have a very different resonance now.”