It was a sultry summer afternoon on the wooded campus of Sarah Lawrence College, where Julianna Margulies got her start on stage as an undergraduate in the late 1980s, and the actress was reminiscing about what she used to hear from casting directors.
"They would always say, `Well, you'll never do TV'," she recalled.
"I was either too Jewish-looking, too European-looking, too Greek-looking.
"Ethnic.
"But yet I wasn't ethnic, so no-one knew what to do with me . . .
"I just thought, `OK, so I won't do that'."
So much for that plan.
Within five years of graduating, Margulies had broken into television with parts on Philly Heat and Homicide: Life on the Street, then landed the star-making role of Carol Hathaway on ER.
Now, after spending nearly a decade doing an eclectic mix of projects including Broadway plays, The Sopranos, and the movie thriller Snakes on a Plane, Margulies is returning in a new series that is poised to be her most prominent television platform since the blockbuster hospital drama.
She was back at Sarah Lawrence to shoot a scene for The Good Wife, in which Margulies plays the spouse of a disgraced Chicago state's attorney brought down by a prostitution and corruption scandal.
The drama explores the crosscurrents of betrayal and panic felt by the wives of adulterous politicians and what happens behind the brittle public facade.
The husband-and-wife writing team of Robert and Michelle King hit on the idea after the string of sex scandals involving former US senator Larry Craig, former New Jersey governor James McGreevey and former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.
As they watched the men address the allegations in awkward news conferences, they were struck by the role played by their wives.
"All had this interesting component of the wife standing by her man, being pulled through the mud, and also being used as a prop," Robert King said.
"We found that image poignant and kind of fascinating and thought there was no more interesting character in modern politics."
"What was so interesting to us was that so very many of the women did choose to stay in the marriage, and how many of them were extremely accomplished women," Michelle King added.
Alicia Florrick, the character at the centre of The Good Wife, is a defence attorney who put aside her career for 13 years for her husband, an ambitious politician played by Chris Noth.
When he is incarcerated, she is forced to return to work to support her two children.
Robert King said they immediately thought of Margulies for the role.
"We knew we wanted someone who could do comedy, who had a light touch," he said.
"We didn't want this to be Ibsen.
"Julianna has the ability to communicate in facial expressions 100 times more than what we can in words."
It wasn't a hard sell for Margulies, who was drawn to her character's complexity.
"We're all so quick to jump at judgement of another human being without knowing the full circumstances," she said.
"So it was a great thing to be able to step into her shoes and see it from inside out, rather than outside in.
"And I really have tremendous respect for these women.
"I think they're incredibly brave."
That said, the actress said she still had trouble comprehending Alicia's decision to remain loyal to her husband.
"In my mind, had that happened to me, I would have left," Margulies said.
"My instincts would be to punish him . . .
I have to remember to keep her soft and a little bit more vulnerable."
The show is garnering strong buzz, in part because it's debuting on the heels of a recent rash of political sex scandals, including South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's much-publicised affair.
"The Sanford one was the one we were like, `Wow, maybe I don't have to do press'," Margulies joked.
She's optimistic about the show's prospects, noting that it's airing in the last hour of prime time, when "all the people who actually want to see a drama . . . can sit and eat some ice cream and disappear into someone else's life". - Los Angeles Times The Good Wife premieres at 9.30 tonight on TV3.
