Yahoo News 'The Good Wife' Postmortem: Inside Alicia's Teary Compromise, Colin Sweeney's Return
Spoiler alert! The March 1 episode of The Good Wife found Alicia biting her tongue in front of a homophobic, sexist donor (Ed Asner) to secure his backing for her PAC, Kalinda being forced to join Bishop’s inner circle as his son’s bodyguard and driver, and recurring guest star Dylan Baker playing three roles while Colin Sweeney sued a TV producer for defamation after he based a wife-killer on him.
Yahoo TV spoke with Baker, who’s already received three guest actor Emmy nominations for his appearances on the show, as well as with Laura Benanti, who returned as Sweeney’s current wife, Renata. But first, creators Robert and Michelle King discuss Alicia’s compromise and Bishop’s impact.
We see Alicia cry at the end of this episode when Grace tells her that she’s a good person. As a viewer, you half-expected her to give back the money after Prady’s visit.
Robert King: Here’s the thing: We knew she couldn’t give back the money because it’s not her money; it’s the PAC’s money. But it doesn’t mean that Alicia isn’t finding herself more and more damaged by these ethical compromises she’s making along the way.
Michelle King: I mean, the tension is that Alicia’s self-aware enough to recognize that she’s making compromises, but she’s also ambitious enough that she wants to win. So it’s going to be a tension that eats at her.
The fact that Bishop funds her PAC keeps resurfacing.
Robert King: A lot of it is just trying to show how candidates who might be the cleanest people on the face of the earth are still dealing with a lot of the dirtiness of politics, mostly because of this unsolicited, untraceable money that goes into PACs that try to help the candidate or an issue win.
But we saw a softer, or at least more restrained Bishop this episode when he called the parent of a boy bullying his son.
Robert King: Mike Colter is such an amazing actor, and everybody’s catching on now and stealing him from us, which we take as a personal affront. [Laughs.] He’s in a lot of shows coming up. While this guy can play the very grim drug kingpin, it’s always fun to see how there’s a real human side underneath that because he’s a dad. Being a dad myself, I shovel some of my issues into him. It’s just like you got a guy who’s split right down the middle. And obviously, Kalinda’s got front row seats for that.
Moving on to Dylan Baker...
What did you think when the Kings first told you they wanted you to play all three roles: Sweeney, the character in the TV show (Bernard Loomis), and the actor who played Loomis (Jerome Morris)?
Dylan Baker: It’s always exciting when they tell me they want to do another Sweeney episode. I know they’re going to go out there — way out there — and try something crazy. We had already been talking about this episode, but I didn’t know much about it. I was out at lunch with a friend, and all of a sudden the phone rang, and I answered, and it was Robert King. He said, “There’s this guy that is playing you in a show, and we thought that we’d have to cast an actor but we haven’t cast it yet.” He just wanted to know whether I wanted to take a swing at it. I was immediately fascinated and said, “Oh yes, that sounds great.”
What was really fun was, then it took about three days on set of talking to the costumer and makeup and hair people to come up with something that was a little out of our comfort zone for the guy on the stand. By the end, he was an amalgamation of everybody’s input.
Can you point to any specific influence for the actor, Jerome Morris?
Baker: I have to say, I’m right now working on this play, The Audience, with Helen Mirren [who stars as Queen Elizabeth II]. John Major [Baker’s character, a former prime minister] is, certainly, a very respectable, conservative guy, but he’s from an area of London that’s very urban. In working on that urban London accent, I started thinking… At first the [Good Wife] character was written as this jaded British actor who was down on his luck and therefore playing this television role and looking down on it. I thought, “What if we go the other way? A younger guy that’s not as experienced, who’s very excited about getting on television, and looking at it like Marlon Brando approaching Streetcar. This is a guy who really gets into trying to figure out this character.” That’s where we got to. I would say there’s just a little bit of a nod, a thank you to John Major.
What about his hair? Any inspiration there?
Baker: I guess where that came from was, I directed a film for the first time a couple of years ago, 23 Blast. One of the lead actors is a young guy named Mark Hapka. I couldn’t believe it, he’d come to set and his hair would be sticking up in the middle of his head, and I’d be like, “What’s that?” He’d say, “No, that’s the way I want it.” I notice it now, more and more, that these young guys try and have their hair sticking up.
Now, of course, this actor that I’m playing, he’s not a young guy, but he’s trying his best to appear like a young guy. And they darkened it a bit.
The scenes from Call It Murder, with Bernard Loomis calling 911 and then burying the body, were fantastically over-the-top. What’s your memory of filming those?
Baker: I do remember when we were out there burying the body, it was one of those brutal, cold nights. But then again, we shoot in New York in the winter, so what do you expect? As close as I get to playing Thor in a movie is playing Colin Sweeney, or Bernard Loomis, or whoever the heck he is, trying to cover up his tracks burying his wife and burying the gloves. I know that there’s going to be a scene or two where the camera is shaking because that was really hard to keep a straight face, too, because we’re all just out there freezing and I’m dancing around like I’m the lead of Phantom of the Opera or something. It was fun.
Sweeney’s reactions in the courtroom to Loomis’s testimony were also fun to watch.
Baker: I just gave it a whole slew of reactions. I haven’t seen the final episode. At first, the script was very much about how I didn’t approve of everything he was doing. I thought Sweeney being Sweeney, there’s also a possibility he’ll be attracted to somebody that has spent so much time trying to find out about him. I thought I’d put in a little bit of that, he was also just interested in this guy.
Let’s talk about a couple of key moments. There’s that great scene when Sweeney is telling Alicia that Cary and Diane don’t like him. Alicia says, “I don’t like you either,” and Sweeney says, “Don’t be silly.” In your mind, how does Sweeney view his relationship with Alicia? Does he genuinely believe that she likes the challenges he presents and is amused by him?
Baker: I think they’ve been through so many things together, and I do think that Sweeney has a pretty big ego: Why is she always there? She’s smitten, of course. Just unluckily for her she has these other things going on in her life, because I know that, really, the Sweeney charm would just completely overwhelm her in a short matter of time.
I love the moment when Sweeney leans over in court to Diane and says, “Guess I should move those gloves.” Then he asks Alicia for her help in, hypothetically, not perjuring himself when he testifies about his wife’s death.
Baker: He’s certainly had fun with Alicia and Will, when he was still with us in The Good Wife — throwing things out at them that would astonish them. He wants to see people blush. He wants to see people cringe. I think in the courtroom, he throws that out there, more or less just to see a reaction from Diane and Cary.
When they confront him, and he learns a little bit more about what’s going on in the courtroom, he realizes, “I need Alicia. I’m paying this much money, I want the best mind that knows the way I think and knows what I am capable of.” I want her working for me all the time, and I’m able to get her on board.
Sweeney threatened to reveal that Bishop funds Alicia’s PAC. Do you anticipate us seeing Colin Sweeney again this season?
Baker: They have, actually, asked me about something possibly. I haven’t heard about where it is or where it’s going. Those writers don’t usually miss too many things. If they’ve got something up their sleeves, they’ll use it, certainly. It’s very possible that it’ll come back to us.
Was there any joking on the set that playing three roles in this episode has to finally earn you that guest actor Emmy? Like, what else can you do?
Baker: [Laughs.] If this doesn’t work, maybe I’ll play four or five characters in the next episode. We’ll see.
And finally, to Laura Benanti…
Was Renata licking her lips in court at Sweeney scripted?
Laura Benanti: In my recollection, it said it in the script. I remember reading it and saying, “Oh God, why don’t I have Angelina Jolie lips?” and stressing about it. I had just performed at the Kennedy Center Honors the night before shooting one of the days. I was up till 2 a.m., flew back at 4 a.m., and had to lick my lips all day. [Laughs.] So I was a little bit delirious.
Robert King was also very tickled with Renata flirting with Marissa Gold (Sarah Steele).
Benanti: That was scripted as well. I mean, certainly the lines were there. The lines aren’t particularly flirtatious, but I think Renata sort of approaches her life by flirting with everyone.
What kind of backstory have you created for Renata that we may not see on-screen, but it informs how you play her?
Benanti: I hesitate to say mine, because if it’s not on the same page as what’s going on in their minds, I don’t want them to be like, “She’s crazy!” But goal was always just to approach her like a person. I never wanted to play her like a maniac. She wants things. We, as people, want things in his life, and the things that she wants are just like a little more horrifying than what other people want.
Robert says you’re so good at comedy, he’d like someone to give you the most hilarious show ever. Would you be open to a sitcom, or do you prefer the kind of comedy you find in a drama?
Benanti: I was on a comedy called Go On that Matthew Perry was the star of, that got canceled. [Laughs.] I do these little comedy videos that I write myself that are all over the Internet. I actually just did a bunch of them as promotion for the "New York Spring Spectacular" that I’m doing here at Radio City Music Hall that I think are really funny. I find that the funniest stuff comes out of humanity, and so I like dark comedy, I like dramedy. Sometimes the things that make me laugh the hardest like Louie, are the things that are just [laughs] so shocking and horrible, and we can all relate to as humans. So for me, I want to be a part of really good writing. That is what’s ideal, which is why being on a show like The Good Wife is just a wonderful experience for me.
You’re recurring on Nashville now, but you’ve also been cast as Alura Zor-El, the birth mother of Kara, in CBS’s Supergirl pilot. How soon do you start filming that?
Benanti: I think it’s the second week of March. Greg Berlanti created a show that I was part of many years ago called Eli Stone. We had been looking for something to do together, and this came up. He called me, and he knows that I’m still involved in Nashville and that I have a Broadway show coming up in 2016 [She Loves Me with Josh Radnor], so it only really gives me a short window for any television. I can’t do a pilot this year as a series regular. I just love that he’s bringing feminism to superheroes, because I think that is a crossover that’s very necessary.
What excites you most about the role?
Benanti: I can’t really tell you about it because it’s a spoiler. But it really was the linchpin for me, where I was like, ‘Yes, I have to do it.’”
The Good Wife airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on CBS.
