Actresses Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies in a scene from the TV show The Good Wife. Photo / Getty Images
Well, here's one way to completely upstage the season premiere of your former show.
On Monday morning (about 12 hours after The Good Wife aired its seventh season opener), Archie Panjabi took to Twitter to add fuel to the fire about a rumoured feud with former co-star Julianna Margulies - one that Margulies, a producer on the show, had just emphatically denied.
A brief recap: Margulies and Panjabi's characters (Alicia and Kalinda) were close friends and lead stars of the hit CBS drama for several seasons. Then suddenly, in the middle of the fourth season, the actresses stopped appearing in scenes together.
Even though their characters were closely intertwined, they literally did not appear on camera together for the next two years. This included a scene in May's Season 6 finale that reportedly used a special-effects split screen to make it seem as if they were having a conversation sitting next to each other - extremely strange for any show, let alone a prestige, Emmy-winning drama. That was Panjabi's last appearance on the series.
Rumours of a feud between the two - why else go to such ridiculous lengths to stay apart? - lit up the Internet, and showrunners Robert and Michelle King sidestepped the issue. Then over the weekend, Margulies finally spoke out, calling out the idea of a feud as sexism and "totally gossip."
"There's no story there, sorry ... I actually had heard (that rumor) and I feel that it has been talked about and answered," Margulies said at the New Yorker Festival on Sunday. "I feel people just like to have gossip or make something into something that isn't there. There's no animosity on my part." She also added of the split-screen incident, "It was shot the way Robert wanted to shoot it, and the story line, too. You also have to remember, there's difficulty. ... (Panjabi) was also doing another show called 'The Fall.' "
That's when Panjabi fired this unexpected tweet back, linking to a Vulture story of Margulies's comments:
"@TheFallTV was not even in production at that time and I was in New York ready to film the scene!"
http://t.co/7Ci8jY9lSf. @TheFallTV was not even in production at that time and I was in New York ready to film the scene!
— Archie Panjabi (@archiepanjabi) October 5, 2015
That's the first time anyone has given any sort of direct response to the feud rumors, which have increasingly irritated fans of the long-running series. Not only did the Alicia-Kalinda separation look stilted and awkward on-screen and affect several story lines, but no one offered a good explanation.
From the beginning, the showrunners maintained that the rift had to exist because Kalinda confessed to sleeping with Alicia's husband at the end of Season 2. That didn't totally add up because the characters largely made up the following season, but Robert King later said that they thought they got over the problem "too easily." "We won't get into a public fight with Julianna on this because she knows this character almost better than anyone," King said, seemingly confirming that the decision came from Margulies.
Then after the Season 6 finale split-screen scene, the showrunners went on the defensive - and still avoided a direct answer - when TVLine's Michael Ausiello told them point-blank that viewers felt duped by the obvious, extensive separation of Kalinda and Alicia with no real answer.
"What I don't like is how this connects itself to gossip. Just so we're clear, Josh (Charles) wasn't really killed," King said, name-checking the character who was killed off in a shocking twist. "We faked those gunshots. We fake everything in the show, so I can address this on a story-telling level that there was no intent ever to dupe the viewers."
Explaining how TV death scenes work didn't do much to quell viewer dissatisfaction. And now months later, after the lack of a cohesive response, everyone is again reminded of the rumored "feud" - and Panjabi isn't even on the show anymore.