Is The Good Fight—the new spinoff of CBS hit drama The Good Wife– gearing up to attack President Trump?
Creators Robert and Michelle King say the entire premise of the show, that will primarily appear on the CBS’s stand-alone app from mid-February, has been comprehensively overhauled after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.
Michelle King told the New York Times: “We’re not doing as many cases that would just be, say, a typical crime-of-the-week-type case. We’re not doing, ‘here’s just a murder.’ Things seem to be more politically freighted now.”
The Good Fight no longer focuses on Julianna Margulies’ spurned lawyer Alicia Flockhart—the subject of The Good Wife—but on her former colleague Diane Lockhart played by Christine Baranski. Michelle King said that Lockhart works at a law firm in Chicago, primarily populated by African-American lawyers, who view the incoming administration with “trepidation”.
The show also promises to cover the fake news phenomenon and tackle, “the confusion between what’s real and what’s not real” according to Robert King.
The Good Wife, which was inspired by former New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s prostitution scandal, has previously satirized liberals.
Despite being unashamedly ripped-from-the-headlines, the creators did not forsee a Trump election win and had to re-write scenes showing Diane Lockhart retiring from the law following Hillary Clinton’s anticipated presidential victory.
The show will now open with “Diane’s stunned reaction to the inauguration”, according to Michelle King. Baranski’s character will reportedly utter the F-word in response to seeing Trump being anointed President.
Baranski, who becomes the lead of the show at the age of 64, did not try to hide her disdain for Trump.
She said: “We were all in free fall [on election night]. And I think the interesting thing is you have a lead character who is in more of a practical free fall in a similar way to what the country is feeling right now, like how do you take the next step up when there’s no foundation? Where are we? Where are we morally?”
