‘The Good Wife’ Rumors: Margulies Vs. Panjabi Feud Continues, Argue Over Faked Final Scene Together

The Good Wife aired its seventh season premiere on Sunday, to slightly lowered ratings compared to last year’s debut episode, but perhaps of greater interest to fans, since the start of a new season did not mean an end to the feud between star and producer Julianna Margulies and now-departed co-star, Archie Punjabi.

As even casual viewers of The Good Wife will certainly remember, the finale of the acclaimed show’s sixth season included a scene in which Marguiles and Panjabi appeared together, having a conversation over drinks at an upscale bar.

But viewers noticed something strange about the scene. First, it was the first scene in almost two years that Margulies’ character, Alicia Florrick, appeared in a scene with Panjabi’s Kalinda Sharma — even though the two fictional characters had been introduced as “best friends” early in the run of the show.

The fact that they stopped appearing in the same scenes led to rumors that Panjabi and Marguiles, for whatever reason, simply couldn’t stand each other. The show added a storyline in which the “Kalinda” character slept with Alicia’s husband, which fans took as a way to paper over the hatred between the two actresses.

But the scene in the Season 6 finale was not only startling to fans, there was something even more strange about it. The scene showing the two actresses interacting appeared to be fake. As it turned out — those rumors were true. Each actress shot her part of the scene separately.

The two performances were then digitally composited to make the scene appear as if the two were in the same room, sitting just inches apart from one another. A screen capture from the infamous faked scene can be seen at the top of this page. Even in that image, a dividing line between the two actresses is clearly visible.

Finally, in an interview published Monday on the New York Magazine online site Vulture, Margulies attempted to explain what was happening — and she denied any bad blood between Panjabi and herself.

“Right, I’ve heard about [the feud]. Who says that? It’s totally gossip. I heard that question had been asked to Robert King…. There’s no story there, sorry. I actually had heard [that rumor] and I feel that it has been talked about and answered. I feel people just like to have gossip or make something into something that isn’t there. There’s no animosity on my part.”

Margulies went on to explain the the two actresses had filmed their dialog separately because Panjabi was simultaneously filming the British detective series The Fall.

“I went along with whatever Robert asked me to do and I did it happily,” Margulies said.

But her interview claims brought an immediate response from Panjabi, who in effect called Margulies a liar.

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 (@PanjabiArchie) October 5, 2015

For those unable to see the above tweet, Panjabi wrote on Monday morning that “The Fall was not even in production at that time and I was in New York ready to film the scene!”

Marguiles also implied that the “gossip” about the on-set Good Wife feud was fueled by sexism.

“It’s a shame, because I wonder if it was two men, when one finds out that he f****d his best friend’s wife, if it would get that same attention, you know what I mean?” she sain in the interview.

Panjabi, despite that she was a favorite of loyal Good Wife fans, departed the show after the sixth season, with the now-infamous digital “split screen” scene as her swan song.

“All I can say is this: the decision-making process is not something I’m privy to,” Panjabi said last May, after the sixth season finale of The Good Wife aired, and with her latest statement, she has only added to the rumors of a longstanding feud with Margulies.

[CBS TV Screen Capture / Frazer Harrison / Stephen Live-in / Getty Images]