The Good Fight season 3: Why Julianna Margulies isn’t returning
The idea of Julianna Margulies coming back as Alicia Florrick to The Good Fight is the stuff TV legends are made of. Who wouldn’t want to see her back? She’s the reason that The Good Wife, and consequently this spin-off, even existed. We actually didn’t think that this would ever happen at all, so the idea of her coming back is something we can really get behind. Alas, it’s also apparently too good to be true now we know the circumstances around why it didn’t happen.
Speaking (via Deadline) while at the latest the Contenders Emmy event, Margulies confirms that the reason for her not getting to take part has strictly to do with money: “CBS wouldn’t pay me … I’m not a guest star; I started the whole thing with The Good Wife. I wanted to be paid my worth and stand up for equal pay. If Jon Hamm came back for a Mad Men spinoff or Kiefer Sutherland wanted to do a 24 spinoff, they would be paid.”
The website notes that Margulies was offered a guest star rate to appear in multiple episodes of the third season, which obviously isn’t what you would think the star of the original show would receive. We do think that Julianna has a pretty substantial argument here — equal pay is a big part of it, but also consider what her value would be to the greater Good Fight universe at large. Even the very news of her appearing on this show would have generated so much buzz and attention around the program — buzz and attention that it may not have received otherwise. It could have gotten some more original Good Wife fans on board the new show, which is creatively very strong, but isn’t getting anywhere near enough attention as a whole.
While this appearance didn’t happen at this particular point, we do think there’s still a chance things could change down the line. This doesn’t seem to be a situation in which Margulies was unhappy with the creative; if CBS ponies up, maybe she’ll get a chance to appear to the satisfaction of a whole lot of fans. We’ve said for years that we were satisfied with the final Alicia Florrick scene on The Good Wife where the show echoes the very first episode, but that doesn’t take away from the joy that would come via seeing her again. We don’t think it would invalidate the ending there — Alicia has learned. That was the takeaway from that finale. She’s paid the penance for her misdeeds and she’s ready to take the next step forward. Seeing her again would be an actual way in which to properly see if that was true.
For The Good Fight, it keeps fighting … well, the good fight over on CBS All Access.
Do you want to see Alicia Florrick on The Good Fight at some point before the series comes to a close? Be sure to share in the comments and if there’s any news on this out there, we’ll have it for you here.