*The CBS ALL ACCESS series “The Good Fight” is one of our favorite crime dramas on the streaming platform because it features the uber-talented Christine Baranski and variety of awesome Black actors, including Cush Jumbo, Audra McDonald, Delroy Lindo and Michael Boatman.
Created by Robert and Michelle King, the series is a spin-off and sequel to “The Good Wife,” starring Baranski as Diane Lockhart and her team of Black attorneys at one of Chicago’s preeminent law firms.
According to the official press release, Season 4 finds the African-American law firm at the center of the series, Reddick, Boseman & Lockhart, navigating a very different landscape. After losing their biggest client, and their founding partner’s name tarnished, they are forced to accept an offer by a huge multinational law firm, STR Laurie, to become a small subsidiary. While STR initially seem like benevolent overlords, the Reddick, Boseman & Lockhart staff find themselves chafing at their loss of independence, while simultaneously investigating the emergence of a mysterious “Memo 618.”
We caught up with series star Michael Boatman, who plays Judge Julius Cain on the series — and Diane’s former partner at Lockhart/Gardner — to dive a little deeper into this captivating mystery.
Check out our Q&A below.
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(June 27, 2018 – Source: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images North America)
Memo 618 has Julius and certain members of the law firm shook, and there’s that moment in Episode 2 where he struggles with making the decision he’s forced to make in court after being warned what would happen if he doesn’t play along. No spoilers but will we get to further explore the impact this has on him personally or professionally?
Yes. Not to give anything away but it becomes a very big deal not only for Julius but for Diane Lockheart, Christine Baranski character, where I get plunged into this world…you know that statement, “be careful what you wish for cause you might get it?” Well Julius sort of gets that. Last season, my character reveals in one episode how much he was an idealistic young conservative at the beginning of his career who always thought the path of power really is the federal bench, well this season he learned though Memo 618 and other sorts of things, it goes down a very dark, rabbit hole for him. So, yes, Memo 618 is a huge deal this season.
One episode tackles the N-word in a way that is certainly captivating, and it left me thinking about the writer’s room and the make-up of writers of color specifically. Did the Black cast have any input on how to best explore this very triggering topic?
The best thing about our writer’s room, it is diverse, and I never know from season to season how many people are coming back. But I know that there are several writers of color, several women, so it’s very interesting to be on a show like The Good Fight now because sometimes, and I’ve joked around with some of cast at times, that it felt like we were on “a black show.”
And those times on the set have been mostly when Christine’s character is in a scene and, this is obviously in earlier seasons where it was even more the case, where it was like, ‘hey, wow’s there’s only like, black people in this scene.’ And this is kind of an amazing experience because then you realize that our writers and our showrunners and creators, Robert and Michelle King, are just always brilliant about allowing their writers of color to speak and to have an authentic voice.
At the beginning of every season they meet with the actors to sorta say, well this is what’s going to happen for your character and that sort of thing. And at that point we’re then free to have conversations with them about, ‘oh well what do you think?’ And I’ve noted that when it comes to issues specifically around issues of race, Robert and Michelle both seem very comfortable with letting the writers of color in the room actually lead those discussions. Robert and Michelle are both writers they bring a ‘writerly’ sort of understanding to the whole process. Basically, what I think they have understood is that, writing for minority characters really shouldn’t be that much different than writing for majority characters because we all want the same things. The rules are no different when you’re writing for a character just based necessarily on race, but you have writers there who have insight from their own experiences. How great is it to be able to let them weigh in.
My last experience in the writer’s room, there was a writer there who had a similar experience to my character’s experience, growing up in the South being from a conservative family, so it was great to go into that room and to those meetings and to have those discussions knowing that these issues have actually been talked about and dealt with by people who know, empirically, what these issues are about. And that the top brass on the show are open and encouraging to allow that knowledge to filter into the show.
The episode also tackles reparations, and a lot of the dialogue played out like conversations had by many Black influencers online. I know you can’t speak on how much of social media influences the themes explored on this series, but after four seasons, is it important for you to follow conversations online or blog recaps about what fans think of the show?
I try to sorta keep abreast and I had to do that as a result of the fact that my character is a conservative and I needed to educate myself and I’m a political junkie. I follow politics a lot but in real life, I’m a liberal. I watch MSNBC and proudly. But in order to play my character honorably, I needed to understand different conservative mindsets and so what I did for a while was plunge myself into that realm online and it can be scary. It’s a scary realm, I mean you’re hearing the sorta far-right mentality. What I found was, in extremes, both sides sound crazy. You know what I mean? And from listening to blogs and going to people’s vlogs just to immerse myself in what people are talking about on the right side of the aisle, on the conservative side of the aisle. So I know, for me, it was important.
I also didn’t want to play stereotypes. In the first season they revealed my character was a Trump supporter and that was really, really difficult for me personally to understand but I’m not playing myself, I’m playing Julius Kane so I wanted to be able to understand, to answer certain questions which the writers also played a huge hand in, in sorta helping me to play this character and do the character justice. And so yes, the internet was very helpful for me because what I think we tend to do as human beings is isolate ourselves among people who agree with us. And I’m certainly guilty of that. I certainly find myself with friends who politically tend to agree and my friends who don’t politically agree, we don’t really talk about it. People decide friendships are more important than winning an argument today, or trying to change somebody’s mind or something. What I think that ends up doing though is, you sorta isolate and you stay within your little political sphere that you’re comfortable with and this role and this show forced me to step out of that, which I’m eternally grateful for.
And what I’ve learned really is that everybody’s got something to say. Everybody should have a voice. For me I’ve found that at the extreme ends of both ends of the spectrum, are kinda crazy. We’ve had death threats about one of the episodes last season, ‘It’s Time of Punch a Nazi’ episode where Nyambi Nyambi’s character says in the middle of what’s essentially a riot, turns to the camera and says ‘It’s time to Punch a Nazi.’ You would not believe how much hate mail the show got and death threats. You know, crazy stuff. So I think we have to pay attention to it. At the same time, Robert and Michelle King are guiding the show through the sort of turmoil of whatever’s going on in this country, to deliver what essentially they want to deliver every episode. So it’s a very interesting time to be doing a show like this.
To our readers who have never seen this show, what makes The Good Fight unique compared to similar legal dramas currently airing?
I think what makes The Good Fight unique, certainly compared to other legal dramas. is that there is a strong element of comedy. The Kings, the writers, really love shows that flip back and forth between what’s really happening, torn from the headlines sorta of stuff, to then almost goofy, wacky but very witty and smart comedy. The show always gets cited for that in reviews and I think people think because of The Good Wife, and The Good Wife certainly had moments of humor as well but The Good Fight, I think, they have focused on. It’s sort of a mixed plate of drama and then almost absurdist comedy and so I think for people who think ‘oh it’s just a show about boring lawyers’ and all of that stuff, – No. It’s actually very funny every episode, like our season premiere,, which is almost terrifying. So I think for me it really spans the gamut from very dark, heavy- handed drama to then completely ridiculous almost surreal comedy. For people who think it’s a dark legal show, it’s like yeah, but we’re also hilarious.
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