‘The Good Wife’ Star Alan Cumming Reveals How Playing Eli Gold Changed Him
As The Good Wife continues its trajectory toward the season finale, one of the show’s enduring supporting characters, Peter Florrick’s long-suffering political advisor Eli Gold, has another plum storyline. Alan Cumming, who plays Gold, spoke with the CBC about the show and revealed it’s allowed him to explore a different side of his professional and personal life.
“Suddenly, I embraced my middle aged man.”
Cumming revealed he had no plans to stay on for Season 8, even if The Good Wife had gone on for another year. He said coming to the end of the show has been “explosive.”
It’s an interesting place for Cumming to find himself, given there was general industry disbelief when he was first cast in The Good Wife. Cumming has a background in theater, and his roles have included numerous fantasy characters.
“Everyone thought [the casting directors] were nuts.”
He’s experienced some nostalgia as the long-running legal drama comes to a close, telling the CBC he had a revelation while watching Sarah Steele play her last scene as Eli’s daughter Marissa.
“Oh, that’s her last line she’ll ever say in the series.”
Cumming’s art post-Good Wife includes his stage show where he sings “sappy songs” and tells stories.
Sunday’s episode will likely see Gold continue to probe the reasons behind the latest investigation into Florrick’s dirty dealings. The new installment has another big name guest star: Blair Underwood as a client of Alicia and Lucca Quinn. Underwood plays a grieving father sued by a gun store owner.
It’s one of several television projects for Underwood, who Variety reported earlier this month will star in an upcoming legal drama on ABC. He’s also been featured in Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. His plot on The Good Wife has Underwood as a man who posts a billboard calling the shop owner a murderer after his own child is killed.
In a preview clip provided to E! Online, Alicia and Diane discuss the possibility of starting a new firm, a development teased in the last episode. Left up in the air is whether the partnership will come together, and if so what is the fate of Cary Agos, Diane’s partner and Alicia’s long-time friend and ally going back to when they were competing first-year associates in The Good Wife‘s first season.
The clip’s dialogue reveals that Alicia does not want to make any moves against Cary, but that Diane offers to do the dirty work on her behalf.
“[Y]ou won’t be doing anything. I will offer to buy him out.”
Still shots of the new episode uploaded by CBS reveal there will be plenty of romantic engagement between Alicia and her investigator Jason Crouse, with whom she shared a “lost weekend” last episode. There will be drama on the home front for Alicia, as her daughter Grace is accused of plagiarism.
The Good Wife airs Sunday nights at 9 pm on CBS. The series finale will air Sunday, May 8, 2016, but Enstarz reported that the Tribeca Film Festival will feature a cast discussion and special screening of the finale on April 17, 2016. Entertainment Weekly reported that the discussion will feature Julianna Margulies, Christine Baranski, and Cush Jumbo.
[Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images]
