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An interview with Archie Panjabi

The Good Wife is half-way through its third season on CBS and it has managed to stay one of the strongest legal dramas on television. Considering how many of those there are on network television, that’s no small feat. Showrunners Robert and Michelle King are passionate about their characters, and fans connect with that and their stories, along with the cases that come into the law firm and state’s attorney’s office at the center of the show.

And while the name of the show might make you think Alicia (Julianna Margulies) is the star of the show, she’s only one of a brilliant ensemble cast that make the series the sexy, edgy, intelligent show it is. One of The Good Wife‘s most necessary parts of the group is Archie Panjabi, who plays bisexual private investigator Kalinda Sharma.

Kalinda is a precarious place in Season 3. She’s always been kind of a loner, but she’s also had people in her corner. Now that she’s burnt some bridges with Alicia, Cary and now Dana, she’s feeling a little lonely.

“Kalinda, this season, has been disconnected from everybody,” Panjabi told me. “Cary tried to put her in prison actually in one episode, Alicia doesn’t talk to her, Kelli Giddish isn’t on the season and she hasn’t had any love interests or any relationships so it’ll be nice for her to strike up some friendships in the latter part of the season.”

On Season 2, Kelli Giddish played Sophia, one of Kalinda’s love interests who turned out to be married. And while the relationship was beginning to get interesting, Giddish was soon picked up by Law & Order: SVU and so that storyline had to be scrapped. Panjabi shares our pain.

“They had a great storyline planned,” Panjabi said. “I got on with Kelli Giddish so well. We had a great chemistry between us. Sadly she got signed up by Special Victims Unit, which is great for her but I was really upset because we had a storyline with me, Carry and Sophia. And still today the writers talk about it with sparkles in their eyes but they won’t talk about it, they won’t tell me what it was. Hopefully one day, what was cut short will be explored.”

Sophia has been just one of Kalinda’s love interests on The Good Wife, but it was the one that both the actress and the show’s writers found the most fun to play with.

“I think each of the women have had a different kind of chemistry with Kalinda, but I think with Sophia, Kalinda felt very comfortable with her,” Panjabi said. “Kelli’s character really understood Kalinda more than any of the other women. Kalinda really opened up to this character, and through Sophia we could have gained bigger insight into Kalinda’s character. So that’s why I feel, that’s the way they were going to go. I definitely she feel she had a long history with her. And the scene that Kelli and I did together, she always had this smile on her face which made my character very kind of relaxed. She always had a twinkle in her eye, like she knew what was on Kalinda’s mind.”

So in Season 3, Kalinda stands alone, but she hasn’t been without her flirtations. State’s attorney worker Dana seemed taken with Kalinda, and their parasitic friendship just came to what seems like a timely end on the most recent episode when both women screwed each other over in an important case involving both of their respective offices.

“She has always been attracted to Dana but was also suspicious of her, which was why she never really pursued anything but drinks,” Panjabi said. “I think once somebody crossed the line with Kalinda, when she produced the rider thing that was going to go after Alicia, I think that was Kalinda’s knowing that there was no way a friendship could be struck up after something like that. I think even though Kalinda’s very sexual, she is very particular about who she ends up sleeping with or having a sexual relationship with. So I think with Dana, I don’t know whether a relationship was ever in the cards, but certainly a friendship is no longer in the cards.”

Which might be all the better for Kalinda, as Dana slept with Cary, one of Kalinda’s on-and-off-again friends and flirtation partners. As one of the show’s constant will-they-or-won’t-they couples, Panjabi thinks it’s likely to be a no go.

“I think the Cary-Kalinda relationship is not a love/hate relationship, which is why it’s such a complicated relationship,” she said “They care about each other but they always end up causing injury to each other, not physically, but mentally. I don’t know if we’ll ever end up seeing something happen between those two. If we did, will they ever last? I think there’s always that kind relationship going on and I think Kalinda’s so difficult to open up that when Cary tries to trust her and come closer, he’s kind of giving up. And the more he gives up, Kalinda’s like ‘Well, we’re friends.’ There is a good relationship there. I think like with everything with Kalinda, it’s complicated.”

Because Kalinda has had relationships with a handful of women on the show, it frequently appears she might lean little more toward dating females, but Panjabi said that she believes her character, above all, wants to be challenged.

“I think she’s attracted to the mind,” she said. “I think with Kalinda when she really finds somebody attractive it’s when she connects with them mentally. Initially you can find someone attractive, but Kalinda’s choices of people, a lot of the time, is when she’s challenged by them mentally. I don’t think there’s a lot of people she feels mentally challenged by. She analyzes people all the time.”

Besides Sophia and a possible waning interest in Dana, Kalinda also had a fling with FBI Agent Lana Delaney (Jill Flint). On Season 1, the two frequently met under the guise of working together, which turned into more until Kalinda decided to stick with the firm. However, things aren’t completely over: Panjabi tells me Lana Delaney is making a return.

“I hear she’s coming back toward the end of the season. I’m really thrilled about that,” Panjabi said. “I think Kalinda will be ecstatic!”

As will viewers, who are likely just as ready as Panjabi to see some more interaction between Kalinda and, well, anyone this season – including her former friend, Alicia.

At TCA a few months ago, Robert King told me that Alicia and Kalinda’s friendship is one of the major storylines of this season. Both women find it difficult to connect to people and had found one another a worthy confidant in the firm, helping one another out when needed. But after it came out that Kalinda slept with Alicia’s husband before they knew one another, it destroyed their relationship. Sometimes, though, a camaraderie like theirs can withstand anything after some time.

“I definitely think we’ve seen there has been a lot of coldness between them, but gradually that is beginning to thaw and we’ll see it warming up even in the next few episodes as they do actually talk to each other,” Panjabi said. “They certainly warm up to the point where, I wouldn’t say a new friendship begins, but it definitely changed what they’ve been so far, and they do talk. A new relationship begins. Now how strong of a friendship, I don’t know. But there is definitely a new beginning and how that will pan out remains to be seen.”

When The Good Wife returns in March, we’ll also meet Kalinda’s husband. Yes, that’s right: Kalinda is married. The bombshell was dropped by Blake in a flippant remark in Season 2, but now the writers are casting someone to play the role, something Panjabi knows nothing about.

“The fact that he was her husband would certainly suggest there’s something kind of long term – Kalinda’s definition of long term,” she said. “For her to have married somebody suggests there must have been something that long-termish. It’ll be interesting to see that. am really excited! I can’t quite get over the fact my character was married, the thought of bringing him in really excites me because I know nothing about that relationship and nothing about where they’re going with that. It kind of, in a weird way, makes me more excited.”

But since nothing is every so cut and dry with Kalinda, who knows what her motivation was to get married in the first place. Even if she were in front of me and telling me she married for love, I might not be able to believe her, as her stoic expression and cool demeanor reveal nothing.

“My character doesn’t smile,” Panjabi said. “When she’s at work, she very much has that poker face on. It’s what she needs to have when she’s in contact and dealing with people with whom she needs to talk. I think in more social circumstances, we’ll probably see a lighter side to her and how happy she really is in normal life. We always see her at work so it’s difficult to see that side of her. We see her at work and we see her at the bar with Alicia, which is not when it’s easy for her to lighten up. We’ll see more of if she is a happy person; can she be happy?”

Panjabi said that playing Kalinda is not only fun, but gives her a kind of freedom to explore chemistry with everyone she plays in a scene with.

“I think it’s been an eye-opener for me in that I don’t have any preconceptions when I play her. Male or female, if there’s no written chemistry in the scene, I wait and see what happens between two characters with a very open mind,” Panjabi said. “Kelli Giddish only came on for one episode and we just clicked and I allowed myself to just go with the flow and this big smile came on my face and we rewrote the entire last episode just so Kelli Giddish – we rewrote the scene to put Kelli Giddish in it. I almost allow – I let Kalinda play me, but I almost go in not thinking we there I attracted to that person or not, and sometimes you’ll be surprised who have chemistry with. You just click. I think sometimes they decide to write that and sometimes it doesn’t work. I think that’s just generally in life, you meet people with who you connect, some you don’t, and whether it’s paramount to the story, I like to keep an open mind. It’s definitely fun to play.”

Even though Kelli Giddish ruined everything, we still have the enigma that is Kalinda, and Panjabi said fans always have an excitement about the character, which gives her so much pleasure.

“People look at me and go ‘You’re so different, aren’t you?’ because I’m sitting there smiling,” she said. Which is the reason Panjabi said she can’t wear Kalinda’s clothes offset.

“The clothes are so much part of the character that if I wear it, I end up looking like her!” she said. She does love the wardrobe, though, and says that they have to be careful about what she wears because it has to strike a perfect balance between “provocative and professional.”

“We also want to make sure she’s acceptable because she works at a law firm,” Panjabi said. “She doesn’t show a lot of skin. She might like tight and short skirts, but she has a leather jacket on and she doesn’t carry a handbag.” Her not bringing a purse around with her is something that Panjabi thinks is one of the character’s trademarks.

“Kalinda never carries a handbag or a bag, yet she’s always able to get in and out of places really easily with all these gadgets,” Panjabi said. “A handbag would change my look, but she’s got boots and pockets on her leather jacket. She never carries anything where she goes except in these little secret pockets. I think a handbag wouldn’t allow her – It didn’t seem right for her now.”

If anyone has insight into who her character is and the things she carries, it’s Archie Panjabi.

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