She was hopeful that Charles would be swayed by the enthusiastic reaction to the season’s thrilling first half, in which Alicia and Cary departed the firm and Will and Diane dealt with their betrayal. “Critics and the viewing public were suddenly paying major attention to the show again,” she says. “People were exhilarated by the whole thing. And Josh was doing just stellar work. I kept holding out hope that he would say, ‘You know, this is pretty swell here and the work is fulfilling.’ But he had made up his mind and stuck to it.”
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While Baranski had heard early on from creators/showrunners Robert and Michelle King that Will would be killed off, that didn’t make it any easier for her to read the fateful script when it arrived in December. “I had trouble getting through it,” she says. “I had it over Christmas and I kept trying to read it, and then I’d stop, knowing that this was the episode where it was gonna happen. I was almost in denial. And then there was one morning where I was well-rested and it was quiet in the house, and I said, ‘I’m just gonna do this.’”
When the day came in January to shoot the scene where Diane and Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) discover Will’s lifeless body (until that point, most viewers assumed he would somehow pull through), Baranski made sure to keep her distance from Charles. “When you play scenes like that that are very dramatic, it has to happen to you. They’re reactive in nature, so you can lay a groundwork but you can’t plan how you’re going to react,” she explains. “Josh is on the set the whole time in his trailer but we did not even say hello. He was simply prepared behind the curtain, and then we did a few takes of walking in and seeing it. It was extremely challenging to do, so I’m glad it’s over.”
Baranski did get to reunite with Charles when he returned to direct the April 27 episode (he’d previously directed twice). “It was comforting. I think we all needed some kind of closure,” says Baranski. “And I think for him it was very important to reconnect with his colleagues. Because I think it’s a very difficult thing to do to walk away from a show where it’s a family.”
She also continued her annual ritual with Margulies and Charles, toasting the season’s end at a West Village burger joint. “I was just with him at the Minetta Tavern, having a martini and a burger,” she says. “We always do that at the end of the season. Julianna and her husband and Josh and I, we just have a well-deserved, big, fat, old meal and a few drinks.”
She also continued her annual ritual with Margulies and Charles, toasting the season’s end at a West Village burger joint. “I was just with him at the Minetta Tavern, having a martini and a burger,” she says. “We always do that at the end of the season. Julianna and her husband and Josh and I, we just have a well-deserved, big, fat, old meal and a few drinks.”
Plus, she’s already looking forward to whatever is in store for Diane next year. “When I talk to our head writers, they seem more jazzed than ever,” she says. “I think this thing that happened this year fueled them creatively. It changed the creative topography of the show and it rocked our world and it rocked the viewers. But I don’t see a downside to it so far—except that we miss Josh!”
