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What Julianna Margulies Has Learned From The Good Wife's Alicia Florrick

After seven seasons, Margulies said her CBS character has taught her how to ignore critiques

By Chris Harnick Oct 07, 2015 12:30 PMTags
The Good Wife, Julianna Margulies, Jeffrey Dean MorganCBS

Julianna Margulies has strapped a dowdy brown wig on for seven seasons to transform into The Good Wife's Alicia Florrick. Over those seven years, fans have watched Alicia go from novice lawyer to senior partner at her own law firm, then from State's Attorney seat winner to the bottom wrung of the ladder as a bond court attorney.

"Alicia's starting from scratch again and she's always best when she's at the bottom of the barrel," Margulies told E! News with a laugh.

Alicia's been through her husband's cheating scandal, a voting scandal that was bequeathed to her, mourned the death of her lover, and made and lost friends in the process. This season finds her in bond court and teaming up with a new friend Lucca Quinn (new cast member Cush Jumbo), being wooed by Louis Canning (Michael J. Fox), hiring a new investigator played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan and caught in the middle of a potential war over Peter (Chris Noth) between Ruth Eastman (Margo Martindale) and Eli Gold (Alan Cumming)—" I had to ask Alan and Margo not to look at me during my close-up because I was crying laughing so hard," she said. "It's a lot of fun."

All this is happening and Alicia doesn't really give a s—t.

"Where she is right now, my favorite part is she doesn't care what anybody thinks," she's so…I think she's fed up and done, she's liberated and that's fun to play," Margulies said.

Watch: Julianna Margulies Reveals How "The Good Wife" Is Changing

Alicia's set up shop in her own apartment, taking cases sent to her by Louis Canning and exploring the happenings of bond court. It's a new year, a new Alicia. She's not afraid of the gray areas in life anymore, she finally sees a world where it's not cut and dry between right and wrong. That's something viewers will get a glimpse of in the second episode of season seven when Alicia trades in some favors.

"I think she's sort of gone through enough to know she can defend herself in any situation and get out of it alive, so there's sort of this armor she's built up over these seasons that I really love. I love being in her shoes," Margulies said. "I'm having a lot of fun. It's playing a lawyer, but it's also this whole political life and then there's some stuff going on in her home life."

Seven seasons in, Margulies said she's gone through her own growth while exploring the changes to Alicia Florrick and the world of The Good Wife.

"It's been seven years, so I hope I changed in seven years. I've gotten more confident in the way that she has, I realized a lot of things I took incredibly seriously aren't so serious," she said. "I'm not as jarred by critiques and criticism anymore. I've learned to be a Teflon pan like she has and just let things roll off and let them lie where they lie. I think I've learned, like she has, that silence is a little bit more powerful than speaking."

The Good Wife airs Sundays, 9 p.m. on CBS.