Last spring, Archie Panjabi ended a lengthy run on CBS’ critically acclaimed drama The Good Wife. In the Season 6 finale, a scene brought Panjabi and Julianna Margulies’ character for one last time, but savvy Internet users helped to reveal the scene was a hoax and the two actresses shot it separately, thanks to some drama between the two women. Now, Margulies has spoken out, noting that it was simply scheduling conflicts that led to the scene. According to Panjabi, however, she’s full of it.
Recently, Margulies spoke to Vulture, where she alleged the feud between herself and Panjabi was made up, calling it “gossip.” Instead, she says there were scheduling conflicts leading to the scene getting shot separately.
It was shot the way Robert wanted to shoot it, and the storyline, too. You also have to remember, there’s difficulty … [Panjabi] was also doing another show, called The Fall. I went along with whatever Robert asked me to do and I did it happily.
It sounds like a reasonable explanation and perhaps Margulies would have gotten away with it, but it seems that Archie Panjabi is no longer willing to pretend the problems on set didn’t happen. The actress took to social media to dispute Margulies’ claims, saying she was happy to shoot the final scene with Margulies but that the actress did not seem so keen.
For a long time, scenes between Kalinda and Alicia Florrick on The Good Wife had been nonexistent, with the two women only speaking via phone calls that could be shot separately. The move from friendship to barely speaking was explained on the show due to the fact Alicia had determined that Kalinda had slept with her husband before the two women had met. However, in real life, the rumor mill was stating that the two women did not really like one another and that Margulies had gone out of her way to avoid Panjabi on the set. Since she’s an executive producer and the lead of the show, this led to Panjabi’s roll further eroding on the series until she eventually left The Good Wife at the end of Season 6, but not before filming this ridiculous scene.
In the time since the news broke, some people behind-the-scenes have claimed the problems stemmed from Margulies, while others have alleged Panjabi is the one that was difficult to deal with. There’s one thing that’s for certain, at least. Panjabi is willing to admit there was a problem while Margulies lives in the land of rainbows and bullshit. Maybe if they had been willing to get on the same page about the fact they don’t like one another, that scene could have been shot without looking completely shoddy. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.
