The Good Fight is a show made for this moment.
As the Paramount+ series enters its sixth and final season, its themes of politics, social movements and news consumption have never been more relevant.
While the drama onscreen is as riveting as ever, it's brought up some interesting conundrums for its ensemble cast members, namely: How you do consume the news when your work day is all about the news?
For Christine Baranski—who has played staunch feminist attorney Diane Lockhart for nearly 13 years, first on all seven seasons of CBS' The Good Wife and now on all six seasons of The Good Fight—the experience dramatically changed her viewing habits.
"Playing Diane, it was [MSNBC's Morning Joe's] Mika [Brzezinski] and Joe [Scarborough] first thing in the morning and then I'd get to work and I'd be watching MSNBC," Baranski exclusively told E! News. "At the end of the day, it was always Rachel Maddow. That gets exhausting. There are studies that say it's not good for our health."
So, Christine decided to take things into her own hands.
"I got rid of Apple News because that was just crazy. The ping with the bad news? I got rid of the ping," she said. "But things still appear on my phone saying ‘breaking news.' I mean, are we not sick of breaking news? Is everything breaking news?"
Audra McDonald, who has played attorney Liz Reddick since season two of The Good Fight, has also made a conscious decision to be less dialed-in all the time.
"I'm always on my phone seeing what's going on," Audra said. "I'm trying to do less of that as I get older because you recognize how detrimental it is to your mental health, which is detrimental to your physical health, too."
Contrary to her co-star Christine, however, Audra's appetite for cable news waned given the content of The Good Fight, admitting, "When I would get home from this show, in particular, because you can doom scroll all day as you're working, I would find that it would be necessary for me to turn it off."
Andre Braugher, new to the Good Fight universe in season six as exuberant lawyer Ri'Chard Lane, didn't have any habits to break or amend, admitting, "I'm not connected to the news at all."
But the Brooklyn Nine-Nine alum revealed that's nothing new.
"It's sort of always been the case. I've never been a great television watcher," Andre said. "I've made television my career, but I don't follow it. I've missed some shows in my time. I'm part of a show, in essence, that I've missed, culture-wise. I had no association with The Good Wife or The Good Fight before I joined the cast because TV watching is just not what I do."
John Slattery, who is also new to The Good Fight in season six as therapist Dr. Lyle Bettencourt, has worked to restrict his news consumption recently.
"I used to be very addicted to it," the Mad Men alum said. "I don't know whether I just got in a bad frame of mind, but a lot of the news is bad. Pick your issue. The country is very divided and bad news sells. I try to limit my exposure to it."
In the end, John said, it all just became too overwhelming.
"You can find an outlet that's going to agree with your point of view. I try to stay open-minded, but it's a lot of information," he expressed. "The cycle never ends. If you don't shut it down, you get the crap kicked out of you."
New episodes of the sixth and final season of The Good Fight drop Thursdays on Paramount+.