When Juliana Margulies saw the press conference featuring Anthony Weiner’s wife Huma Abedin last week, she recognized something she had done as Alicia Florrick in “The Good Wife.”
“My initial thought was she had the exact look that I tried to capture in the pilot when you first meet the Florricks and you see her standing behind her disgraced man,” Marguiles says. “It’s sort of a soulless look, like she was looking down. Her body was empty. Her soul was somewhere else, and she was just going through the motions, which is what I think we tried to do in the pilot where you actually go on automatic pilot, and you go where you are told to go, but it doesn’t mean that’s really your real reaction.”
Marguiles says Abedin hasn’t been given a chance to fully react yet. “My initial thought was just complete compassion and empathy for her because I think people are so quick to judge. And having played this character now for four, going on five years, I see it differently. And I think it’s really dangerous, with everyone being able to comment on someone’s downfall can be very damaging.”
Already Marguiles says was seeing stories that tied “The Good Wife” with Weiner’s transgressions and even advice for his wife as gleaned from the show.
“It went into this whole thing that we did in the pilot where Alicia talks to one of her clients and says, ‘Don’t go don’t read the paper. Don’t turn on the television. Just go back to work. Just bury your head, and be a Teflon pan, basically.’
“And I felt proud for a minute that we were part of maybe a solution for someone who is going through something difficult,” she says.
But she adds, “I also feel slightly guilty that [the incident] is really is the gift that keeps on giving. I mean, we are starting season five and it feels brand new.
With “The Good Wife” preparing to play its 100th episode next season, creator Robert king says, “at times it feels like we are basically the old kid on the block, looking at all of these new, relevant shows coming up. And then Anthony Weiner sends a text, and Eliot Spitzer’s madam runs against him for comptroller. So and then the old vigor comes back to tell new stories, and we realize there’s so many stories to tell. ”
“The Good Wife” is able to comment on specific news due to a six week turnaround.
“Things that we are interested in obviously, the Edward Snowden issue this year with the NSA and PRISM is just fascinating. Given the lead time of when we write an episode and when we produce it,” King says, ” just gives you the ability to comment on what everybody is talking about at that moment, whether it is, you know, what is going to happen in the mayoral election in New York or obviously the NSA and all of us being wire tapped.”
The NSA story, he says, “offers a framework for the year” which will also concentrate more on internal firm conflicts than outside guest stars. Despite that, he listed a number of planned guests for the new season including the returning Carrie Preston, Gary Cole and America Ferrera,Melissa George and Jeffrey Tambor.
Its fifth season begins Sept. 29 on CBS.