TV SERIES · 2017– · USA
The Good Fight
22 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (22)
- #001
Producers Michelle King and Robert King hired visual effects artist Lawson Deming (The Good Wife, 2009) to create something quite different for the main title sequence of exploding objects in slow motion. Together with f/x expert Tom Ceglia, Deming used a camera capable of shooting at 25,000 fps and a muzzle-loaded gun to fire both glass and steel balls at fragile objects. For larger solid objects such as chairs and tables, an explosive fuse with greater fragmentation capacity was used. Over the 40 seconds that make up the dynamic intro, the team spent 24 hours of actual shooting, 12 hours of testing, weeks of set dressing and days of editing to complete the sequence.
- #002
Because of the unexpected outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the series filmed two versions of the pilot. Since the production had mistakenly assumed Hillary Clinton would be the candidate, a second version was shot in which Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) watches the television screen in disbelief as Donald Trump is announced as the 45th President of the United States. Throughout The Good Wife (2009), Diane's office wall even featured a (photoshopped) photo of her and Hillary.
- #003
Robert King and Michelle King offered Julianna Margulies a three-episode deal for the first season, but Julianna turned it down because Christine Baranski is the star of the series and Alicia's presence would have distracted from Diane's story.
- #004
Julianna Margulies and Alan Cumming were planned to appear in season 3, but both turned down the opportunity due to a salary dispute. Cumming appeared in season 6.
- #005
Season 4 was supposed to consist of 10 episodes, but only 7 were filmed because production was halted at the eighth episode due to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. However, several scenes already shot for episode 8 (such as Julius's arrest) were edited into the finale.
- #006
Carrie Preston reprises her role as Elsbeth Tascioni from The Good Wife (2009).
- #007
Sarah Steele reprises her role as Marisa Gold, Eli Gold's daughter, from The Good Wife (2009).
- #008
Between seasons 1 and 2, the producers announced that Erica Tazel's character Barbara Kolstad would return for the season 2 premiere, but that Tazel would no longer be a series regular. Robert King told The Hollywood Reporter: "Michelle and I had built a character [Kolstad] where we didn't feel we had enough direction for her future. We felt like we'd written a character into a box. Part of that was avoiding doing what we did when we realized we were using the same muscles on Good Wife." The Kings also announced that Audra MacDonald would join the cast of The Good Fight, playing Liz Lawrence, the ex-wife of regular character Adrian Boseman (Delroy Lindo), a role she had played in a season 4 episode of The Good Wife.
- #009
Colin Morello runs for Congress as a Democrat, while the opposing Republican candidate was a neo-Nazi who advocates white supremacy. This development is based on a real story from Illinois politics. In 2018, while Democratic congressman Dan Lipinski was running for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 3rd District (which includes parts of Chicago's South Side and some adjoining suburbs), the Illinois Republican Party could not find a legitimate candidate to run against him. Into that gap stepped Arthur Jones, a self-declared Nazi who had long openly expressed his hatred of Jews, African Americans and LGBTQ people, and who was described as the Republican candidate for that race. Lipinski won his election by a margin of 74 percent, but that still meant Jones received about 58,000 votes (roughly a quarter of the votes cast in the district).
- #010
Every episode of season 2 contains the word "Day" followed by a number; the numbers indicate how many days have passed since Trump was sworn in.
- #011
The Good Fight is set one year after the events of the final broadcast episode of The Good Wife (2009).
- #012
Delroy Lindo and Cush Jumbo left the series after the fourth season. Because that season was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic (only seven of the planned ten episodes were filmed), their storylines were left unfinished. In April 2021, it was announced that both would return at the start of the fifth season (as guest stars) to complete their stories.
- #013
The southern France scenes in the first season were filmed in January 2017 on Long Island, New York.
- #014
Unlike its predecessor The Good Wife (2009), this CBS All Access series delivers plenty of "premium sensibility," since it is permitted to use the F-word and partial nudity where appropriate.
- #015
In the third season, Gary Carr appears as a fictionalized version of "himself" and as Lucca's (Cush Jumbo) love interest. Although some things stated about "Gary Carr" in the series are true (for example, other characters know him from "Downton Abbey" and "The Deuce," two TV shows Carr actually appeared in), other details are fictional (for example, Carr is not actually a Scientologist). Carr shares most of his scenes with Jumbo. On his first appearance, Carr pretends to have an American accent, but later drops it to speak in his real British accent; Cush Jumbo is also British but pretends to have an American accent to play Lucca.
- #016
The episodes of season 4 were titled after It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episodes, which usually begin with "The gang…".
- #017
In an interview with Jackson McHenry for New York Magazine in May 2020, Christine Baranski (Diane) said that when The Good Fight, like many other film and TV productions, was ordered to stop filming in March 2020 due to COVID-19 shutdowns, Cush Jumbo (Lucca) asked: "Would it be okay if we took some of the toilet paper rolls from the set? Because it's hard to find toilet paper in Brooklyn." The New York area, like many places in the United States, experienced a major paper goods shortage during the first months of the COVID pandemic.
- #018
Gary Cole reprises his role as Kurt McVeigh from The Good Wife (2009).
- #019
In a piece published in March 2021 for New York Magazine / Vulture, Justin Curto reported that Broadway stalwart Mandy Patinkin was able to take on the recurring role of Hal Wackner in the fifth season because Broadway was shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- #020
Due to delays on Star Trek: Discovery (2017), which was expected to be CBS All Access's flagship series, the premiere of the series was pushed back from May to February.
- #021
As of 2020, The Good Fight creators Robert King and Michelle King have been married for thirty-three years.
- #022
Creators Robert King and Michelle King own their own TV production company, King Size Productions, in partnership with CBS.
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