Did Archie Panjabi & Julianna Margulies refuse to film their last scene together?

SPOILERS for The Good Wife

On Sunday, The Good Wife said goodbye to one of their fan-favorite characters, Kalinda, played by British actress Archie Panjabi. Archie already has another deal with another TV network, and I’m not worried about her as an actress. But it’s worth discussing several different parts of Kalinda’s exit from The Good Wife.

Let’s start at the beginning – the first several seasons, TGW was a critically acclaimed show, consistently nominated for many of the big awards. Archie even won an Emmy for playing Kalinda, because in those first few seasons, Kalinda was a revelation. An Indian woman playing a bisexual sexpot and mysterious badass? Holy hell, it was amazing. But at some point, the character sort of lost focus. The writers tried to introduce more of Kalinda’s background, to mixed results. Kalinda’s pansexuality started to grate on my nerves a little bit too, because in TGW universe, every single person, male or female, wanted to go to bed with Kalinda. It felt like the writers didn’t really know what to do with this incredible character they had created, so they just had her seduce every person she encountered.

Part of the problem, as it turns out, was that there seemed to be an effort to keep Kalinda away from Alicia, played by Julianna Marguilies. At first, the separation between these two friends made sense: Alicia discovered that Kalinda had slept with Alicia’s husband Peter Florrick years beforehand. But around the same time, some people began muttering… perhaps Julianna and Archie didn’t get along in real life? At first, I thought this theory was just an effort to pit two professional actresses against each other. But the rumor stuck around, especially when the writers still couldn’t come up with any interesting storylines for Kalinda, and Archie was largely pushed to the side. Several seasons passed and you’d be hard-pressed to find more than one or two scenes with both women per season. Maybe there was something to the theory after all.

So, in the lead up to Kalinda’s departure, many TGW fans were waiting to see if Alicia and Kalinda would end up in the same scene together, and if those characters would get a chance to say goodbye to each other. Well, it happened. Sort of. Except that now the fans think the “goodbye” scene was CGI, split screen and awkward as hell.

My take? I think Julianna and Archie were in the same scene at the same time. I just think it was awkward as hell because the two actresses don’t like each other at this point. E! News had a good analysis here, but E! thinks that it was probably done with split screens and be-wigged body doubles.

But none of this speculation really answers the question of WHY? Why did Archie and Julianna have a falling out? The generally accepted theory is that Julianna, as star and producer, pulled rank and didn’t want another actress getting more press or better storylines than her. Some even think Julianna is a bit of a “princess.” I don’t know what to tell you.

Some photos of Archie at the BAFTAs on Sunday:

Photos courtesy of WENN.

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