In Reunited, Awards Insider hosts a conversation between two Emmy contenders who have collaborated on a previous project.
Midway through The Good Wife’s run, recurring star Renée Elise Goldsberry joined a workshop of an unknown new musical called Hamilton. This was in 2014, when the Carnegie Mellon and USC graduate had become a reliable presence on CBS’s legal drama as Geneva Pine, a whip-smart assistant DA. Goldsberry was one of only a handful of guest stars who’d go on to appear in each of The Good Wife’s seven seasons, operating under the radar while holding her own against heavyweights like Julianna Margulies, Josh Charles, and Christine Baranski.
“I just remember being like, Who is this beautiful, utterly poised young actress?” Baranski recalls. “I didn’t know your work, but you were unflappable and totally prepared, and it was a wonderful character.”
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She’s speaking directly to Goldsberry over Zoom, some 15 years after they first met. Baranski herself had come into The Good Wife as an icon of both stage and screen, having won her first of two Tonys way back in 1984 for The Real Thing and an Emmy just over a decade later for the sitcom Cybill. (She’d go on to play her Good Wife role of Diane Lockhart for 13 years overall, later leading spin-off series The Good Fight.) Goldsberry exited the show well on her way to a similar status: She was a newly minted Tony nominee for Hamilton when The Good Wife ended, ultimately winning that award and receiving her first prime-time Emmy nod a few years later for Disney+’s film version of the groundbreaking musical.
Both are back in the Emmy conversation this season for transformative newer roles: Goldsberry as the fiercely—and, at times, delusionally—determined ’90s girl-group star Wickie Roy in Netflix’s sharp comedy Girls5eva, and Baranski as the stubborn and crafty socialite Agnes van Rhijn in HBO’s period drama The Gilded Age. For these two Broadway regulars, their journeys between TV and the stage have been complex—if also more similar than they ever could’ve expected.
From Theater to Television
Christine Baranski: At the time you were working on The Good Wife, you were doing a workshop of a musical nobody had heard of. [Laughs] Did you ever think you were going to be in probably the greatest musical hit of all time?
Renée Elise Goldsberry: No! Later, there were all these extras around and they were like, “Renée, do you think you can get me in at the Public [Theater]? What do I have to do, Renée? I really want to do a play!” [Laughs] And I remember thinking, Who am I? But I remember the day you came to see the show, how much love you gave me downstairs in the basem*nt of the Public Theater, in the dressing room. I’m so mad because I lost my phone after that day, but I had a really great picture of us. You gave me so much love, girl.
Baranski: You were brilliant, and it was just an unbelievable thing to see.
Goldsberry: I was reminiscing on you and your career even before The Good Wife, shocked at how many similarities we had that I wasn’t aware of at the time. One of them is your history at the Public Theater in Shakespeare in the Park, because that was my breakout as well. I feel like I have the great privilege of having followed in your pretty phenomenal footsteps.
Baranski: Well, you’re kind to say that. I remember the first play I did at the Public Theater. That to me was, Well, now I’m a New York actress. I’ve made it. It was off-Broadway. It was Shakespeare in the Park, James Lapine directing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I still remember it as the happiest theater experience of my life. What did you do first?
Goldsberry: I did Two Gentlemen of Verona, but I did a musical version of it. I had been on Broadway before—I had been in The Lion King—but it was definitely a breakout because it was a time I got reviewed. I got this awesome review by Ben Brantley, and it felt like it gave me the profile to be a part of original shows. [Hamilton writer] Lin-Manuel Miranda and [director] Tommy Kail talk about being kids just out of college in the audience when I was in the park. Who knew it was my audition for Hamilton many years later?
