The Good Wife

One of my current obsessions is the tv show “The Good Wife.”  I made it to the end of season 5, only to find that season 6 isn’t on Hulu or Netflix yet…what gives?  I’m so desperate to watch more that I’m seriously considering buying season 6 on iTunes.  Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) is sassy, smart, and of course gorgeous, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Her role makes me want to go back to law school.  Do you watch?  If not, you have to start now…you won’t be sorry.  Here’s some trivia to get you invested.  Have a great day!

–All episode titles in seasons 1-4 have the same number of words as the number of the season in which they appear. All season one episodes have one-word titles (e.g. Doubt), all season two episodes have two-word titles (e.g. Real Deal), all season three episodes have three-word titles (e.g. After the Fall), and all season four episodes have four-word titles (e.g. Anatomy of a Joke).

–According to Julianna Margulies, after three exhausting years juggling the demanding show schedule and dealing with her baby’s first years, she made a deal with creators Robert King and Michelle King. Starting in season 4, for those big courtroom scenes that take several hours to be filmed completely, Margulies would shoot the scenes where Alicia is an active part first, then they would shoot scenes with the other actors where she would have to be in the background for coverage once or twice and then she would leave the set to prepare her next scenes or have the rest of the day off.

–Julianna Margulies wears a wig for her character Alicia and spends a reported 14 hours a day, five days a week, and nine months out of the year working on the series.

–During a Emmy roundtable for “Hollywood Reporter” in 2014, Julianna Margulies revealed that she was only the third choice for the lead part on the show. Ashley Judd and Helen Hunt both turned down the part of Alicia.

–On July 11, 2012, during the filming of a “Good Wife” episode in which she was guest-starring, actress Kristin Chenoweth was struck by a falling piece of lighting equipment. She was knocked unconscious by the blow and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. After several months of recovery, in which it was unsure if she would be able to return to her role, Chenoweth reported in September 2012 that her medical issues included not being able to “form a sentence after it happened”; a skull fracture; and continuing pain in her ribs and hip.

–The series was partly inspired by the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal. It also draws on other prominent American political sex scandals, such those of John Edwards and Bill Clinton. Creator Michelle King also noted that in these political scandals, the women are lawyers (Hilary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards).

–During a 2011 interview on the National Public Radio program “Talk of the Nation,” Alan Cumming (who plays Eli Gold) confirmed that his character is loosely based on longtime political operative (and, as of 2011, mayor of Chicago) Rahm Emanuel. Cumming said that Gold’s undeveloped backstory includes a former career as a concert pianist, inspired by Emanuel’s early-life, pre-politics ambition to become a professional ballet dancer.

–Guest stars who have played themselves interacting with the show’s fictional characters include: Clinton Administration advisers Vernon Jordan and Donna Brazile; presidential MSNBC anchor and political commentator Chris Matthews; financial TV hosts Lou Dobbs and Jim Cramer; and OJ Simpson lawyer and co-founder of The Innocence Project Barry Scheck. Actor/lawyer/politician Fred Dalton Thompson plays Frank Michael Thomas, a thinly veiled version of himself (Thomas is also a former actor, lawyer, and politician). New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared in the Season Four finale.

–The show is set in Chicago, but filmed in New York. The pilot was filmed in Canada and filming was planned to continue there, but Julianna Margulies asked the producers to shoot in New York because she had just became a mother and couldn’t leave for Canada for nine months a year.

–Elisabeth Shue was considered for the role of Alicia Florrick but turned down the role to spend more time with her family.

–Elsbeth Tascioni’s unseen personal assistant is called Fantasia. The vampire bar in Carrie Preston’s other show, True Blood, is called Fangtasia.

All trivia courtesy of IMDB