“The Good Wife” creators Robert and Michelle King told the cast of the CBS drama last year that this would be their last season on the show.
The cast “was very supportive of finishing this story together,” says Robert King.
CBS had the option to continue with an eighth season — and had even provisionally appointed executive producer Craig Turk as a showrunner — but ultimately decided not to continue without the Kings at the helm. While disappointment is inevitable for the show’s core audience, they will at least see the ending the Kings, who met while working together at a shoe store in LA, intended all along.
The Kings say they planned “The Good Wife” finale six-and-a-half years ago. “After the first 13 episodes, we had to plan how to end the show,” says Robert King. “We thought we could do a five-year or seven-year show. We didn’t know if we were going to be renewed from the first to the second year, but there was such exhilaration. What was very nice was that CBS gave us the freedom to leave. There are shows that are kept on because they bring money in to the network.”
Knowing when to end a long-running series happens too seldom. “With so many shows, there’s just an abrupt cancellation,” says Michelle King. “We got to bring the ship home.”
The series has two major issues to wrap up on Sunday night. Will Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) ultimately divorce her husband Peter (Chris Noth), who is facing another jail sentence, this time on corruption charges? And will Alicia finally get together with investigator Jason Crouse (Jeffrey Dean Morgan)?
“Stay tuned,” says Michelle King.
If the Kings seem overly sympathetic to a scalawag like Peter, they say it’s because he’s not a hypocrite. “Of all the characters, he was the one who learned the most,” says Michelle King. “I find him endlessly fascinating.”
Alicia spent much of her time on the series wavering between staying loyal to Peter and running off with her boss, Will Gardner (Josh Charles), who was murdered in the show’s fifth season. Death wasn’t the only problem, for Will, though. “Will had the sense not to get married,” says Robert King.
Of all the characters, he was the one who learned the most. I find him endlessly fascinating.
- Michelle King on Peter Florrick
“The Good Wife” was always intended as a hybrid series — a procedural that also aimed to tell the story of an ex-lawyer who re-entered the work force when her husband went to jail, and achieved a greater sense of independence. Even though the Kings had their seven-year plan for “The Good Wife,” they acknowledge that Margulies helped shaped the story.
“She kept Alicia changing every year,” says Robert King. “Sometimes she wasn’t on top of her game and had to work her way up. We learned a lot from how Julianna played the character.”
“She’s such a subtle actress that you weren’t locked in to one outcome,” says Michelle King.
“The Good Wife” series finale airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on CBS