USA TODAY International Edition
Dueling campaign managers are ‘ Good’ sports
Actors learn the art of politics and law in ‘ The Good Wife’
Eli Gold, The Good Wife’s brusque campaign manager, has met his match.
Gold, played by Alan Cumming, was threatened this season by the arrival of Ruth Eastman ( Margo Martindale), who was brought in to manage the presidential campaign of Illinois governor Peter Florrick ( Chris Noth) against real- life rivals such as Hillary Clinton. Ruth’s take- no- prisoners style disrupts Eli’s status as consigliere, and she even bumps him into an office barely big enough to accommodate a chair.
“It’s fun to have a character in the show that’s like another Eli, feuding and making up devious plans and double crossing,” says Cumming, more often the “evil imp” who provides comic relief in CBS’ Emmy- winning legal drama, which airs its fall finale Sunday ( 9 ET/ PT). Eli’s “sort of like a shark,” he says. “When he sees another scary fish, even when he wants to attack it, he’s wary.”
Even Peter’s mother, Jackie, is wary, eyeing Ruth “with her pants suit and cheap shoes.”
Says Martindale, who won Emmys for roles on FX’s Justified and The Americans: “I’m not an imp, but I’m evil. I was walking through Lowe’s and a woman says, ‘ Leave Eli alone!’ ”
Co- creators Robert and Michelle King considered them worthy adversaries. “Even when he wants to take her down ... they see in each other talent and smarts,” Michelle King says. “There is respect there that goes along with anger and frustration.”
Both are trying to protect Peter and Alicia ( Juliana Margulies), though Eli isn’t above sabotage to undermine Ruth, even if it means putting Peter at risk. (“Sometimes to stop the cancer you have to endanger the patient,” he says in a recent episode.)
“We both want the same thing, ultimately,” Cumming says.
“I don’t know about that,” says Martindale.
“We’re both pretending we want the same thing, that we want Peter to win and be a big success,” Cumming says. “I imagine that there’s going to be some big outcome, and all this time there’s been a big plan for me to get back at him and bring him down. That may never happen.”
What started as jealousy has become more like teamwork: “Eli is not a gung- ho revengeaholic,” says Robert King.
And they’ve united on one front: Scheming to fend off Jason ( Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the possibly sociopathic investigator who’s been flirting with Alicia.
Both learned about politics from the show, which is set in corruption- friendly Chicago though it is filmed in New York.
“I find it fascinating, because the writing is so good,” Martindale says. “I learned about the bellwether precinct.”
And Cumming mastered “the caucus thing” as Florrick’s entourage prepares to campaign in Iowa when the series returns Jan. 10, just a few weeks before the real- life vote. “I was amazed, being in the gym trying to get 29 people to come over to your side. It was remarkable to me how archaic and cutesy the caucus system is. The idea that could sway an entire country’s decision on how they elect the president because of those funny little people in gyms in Iowa. It’s really nuts.”
Ruth and Alicia aren’t the only women in Eli’s life. In a late-November episode, Eli took up with Courtney Paige ( Vanessa Williams), a potential donor to Florrick’s campaign.
“She’s a billionaire, ( and) we have an affair,” Cumming says. “It’s exciting: I get to have sex with Miss America. Eli falls for her, and that has huge repercussions” in the fall finale. “Something huge happens, partly because Eli has his heart touched.”