How The Good Fight Will Honor The Good Wife's Legacy, Right Down to the Brooches

Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo preview their returns as Diane Lockhart and Lucca Quinn

By Chris Harnick Feb 16, 2017 2:05 PMTags
Watch: Christine Baranski Is Back for "The Good Fight"

The Good Fight is bringing Diane Lockhart back to TV with a starring vehicle for Christine Baranski, and the brooches aren't far behind.

"Of course. That's why they brought the show back. It's the only reason—really, it's the main reason—was more brooches," Baranski joked with E! News about her character having more fashion statement pieces in the spinoff.

In all seriousness, the fashion and writing you'd come to expect from the team that brought you The Good Wife is still on display in The Good Fight, the spinoff series that picks up one year after the events of The Good Wife series finale and finds Diane Lockhart on the verge of retirement. Except that retirement never happens. A financial scam wipes her out and ostracizes her, and her goddaughter Maia Rindell (Rose Leslie), in the process.

photos
The Good Fight First Look: Return to the World of The Good Wife

But just like one of Baranski's favorite brooches, the phoenix, Diane finds new life in the ashes. There's a story to tell, with Good Wife creators Robert and Michelle King at the helm, which is what brought veteran Baranski and Cush Jumbo back into the fold.

"What gives me great faith, hope and trust is that they're the same writers. I would've been much more nervous if the Kings kind of passed on the show and said, ‘OK, here's the brand, now try to continue,' but they are in fact now the creators and continuing writers of the new show. That's what people loved, the writing above all," Baranski said of The Good Fight continuing The Good Wife's legacy of great TV.

When The Good Wife was ending, Baranski told E! News in many ways it was like mourning a death. At the time the show ended, she had played Diane Lockhart for seven years. During that period, The Good Wife was a stabilizing force for her as her real-life changed. But once she knew the show was coming back, Baranski wasted no time thinking about Diane's continued journey.

"It was remarkably easy to just slip back in," she said. "I can't tell you what a gift it's been to play an intelligent, accomplished, well-educated woman who can exist comfortably in a man's world, go toe-to-toe…She had a remarkable capacity for endurance, for getting back on her feet. That's what I valued in playing the character, the character's integrity and strength."

photos
Behind the Scenes of The Good Wife Series Finale
Watch: Christine Baranski Wants to Protect "Good Wife's" Legacy

Jumbo, who was a new addition to The Good Wife for its final season and a huge fan of the series before joining it, said she and Baranski felt from the very beginning that The Good Fight could not be a diluted version of The Good Wife.

"You cannot do a better Good Wife, you can only develop the world in a new direction and show us some things that we as fans have not seen before," Jumbo said.

read
Rose Leslie Is Breaking Toes and Keeping Secrets on The Good Fight
CBS

The Good Fight breaks new ground for these actors as well—they'll be able to curse when it would make sense. The f-bombs fly in the first episode just enough to highlight the stress and drama that comes along with the situation these characters find themselves in. The show will formally live on CBS All Access, so there are no network restrictions making it a new day for Diane Lockhart and Lucca Quinn.

"Everybody agreed that all the new directions that we wanted to explore, we wanted to take the legacy of what we had, but really challenge ourselves to make something worth making. Otherwise you're just peeing on a legacy, and I certainly don't want to do that," Jumbo said.

"I think they will deliver something that the audience knows and is comfortable with, which is that level of intelligent writing," Baranski told us. "As I said, we're going on a new journey and I think they're going to be very brave. Why not? Why shouldn't we be brave with it?"

The Good Fight premieres Sunday, Feb. 19 at 8 p.m. on CBS, new episodes will premiere every Sunday on CBS All Access.