Sarah Steele & Charmaine Bingwa Interview: The Good Fight Season 6

As The Good Fight season 6 begins, everything is in disarray. There’s still tension in Reddick/Lochahrt, protestors crowd the streets of Chicago, and a new name partner (played by Andre Braugher) enters the picture. The Good Fight season 6 is the show’s last, closing the door on “The Good Universe” that began with The Good Wife. How Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) and Liz Reddick’s (Audra McDonald) end remains to be seen. Still, as usual, The Good Fight is going out with its signature combination of wit, self-awareness, and absurdity.

Sarah Steele’s Marissa Gold is still learning how to truly be an attorney after attaining her law degree in season 5. When her father Eli (Alan Cumming) re-enters the picture, things get even more complicated for her. Charmaine Bingwa’s Carmen Moyo, meanwhile, is also fresh out of law school and as mysterious as ever. But this season, the layers are peeled back on the fascinating character.

Screen Rant sat down with Steele and Bingwa ahead of The Good Fight season 6 premiere to talk about the final season, what it was like to say goodbye to the show, and what we’ll learn about the characters in the final 10 episodes.

Screen Rant:Sarah, you’re saying goodbye to The Good Fight after 6 seasons, and you were also in The Good Wife. How does that feel? If you could sum up Marissa’s ending in just a few words, what would they be?

Sarah Steele: Okay, let’s see. I feel like her ending is pretty joyful and decisive. Big, big, big stuff.

And how does it feel? It’s surreal. I’ve gotten so used to just like, oh, well, I’m on hiatus, and we’ll be coming back. So I think because we’re so close to it and because it’s coming out [and] I’m talking about it a lot, it hasn’t totally hit me that it’s actually done. But for the most part, I feel so proud of it. I feel so proud to have been a part of it and to be able to collaborate with these incredible artists for so long. And through different stages of my life and career and, and my own artistry.

We still do have a fanbase, so we could have kept going. But I think we really wanted to go out on a high. And we have John Slattery this year, we have Alan Cumming, we have Andre Braugher. I think we felt like, “Alright, let’s go out with a bang.” And I think we did.

Charmaine, you only joined last season, but I feel like you’ve already made such an impact on the firm, on the whole world of The Good Fight. I love how Carmen almost seems immune to what’s going on outside and inside the office. How does she balance that through the rest of the season?

Charmaine Bingwa: Yeah, I think that’s a really good way to put it, but she is immune. I feel like she has no allegiance or she doesn’t really follow the law. She has her own law-type things. Or she certainly knows how to bend it. I was just saying that I feel like Carmen is a bit of an island, but I feel like her journey throughout this season is to learn that you can’t win as an island. And I think it’s [to] her advantage, and it’s I think it’s going to be one of her lessons to learn how to be a part of something and not lose her calmness.

There’s still so much mystery surrounding her even with what we saw the season 6. Will we get more of her background in the final batch of episodes?

Charmaine Bingwa: Yeah, that’s one of the things that’s really satisfying for me, because I think when you least expect it, we really dig into who and why she is, and I think it’s very surprising and just a testament to the writers and creators because even I was like, Oh, snap, okay.

Sarah, you also got to reunite with Allen Cumming and dive deeper into Marissa’s relationship with her father. What was it like to revisit that side of Marissa that we haven’t seen in so long and explore that dynamic with Alan again, which is just so fun to see on screen?

Sarah Steele: When he and I worked together a lot on The Good Wife, it was very light, it didn’t really dive into the real drama of their dynamic. So it was so nice to actually get to do that. Because it’s always been this very sort of plucky, like, Oh, they’re their father and daughter, but they are more like peers. And to actually dive a little deeper and have her open up and kind of let him in in a different way and then have it go the way it does was just so so fun for us. And Alan is a genius.

Looking back over your time on The Good Fight, do either of you have a specific case or instance, or memory that stands out that you’ll hold on to as everything is coming to an end?

Charmaine Bingwa: This season I feel like Carmen and Diane form an unlikely team and bond which I really enjoy, but it is kind of unexpected. And I think there’s a really beautiful chemistry in that relationship. I really think of that fondly.

Sarah Steele: There was just one day that I forget exactly what happened, but something happened to do with the Me Too movement on this day that I was shooting with Christine and Margo Martindale, who I’ve worshiped since I like a little kid and saw August: Osage County. I was like, “What?”

I got to just listen to them process the Me Too movement and talk a little bit about what it was like for them coming up as young actresses before people were talking about any of this. And I think that was just like a crazy, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. And that’s something that I think I’ll never forget.

That’s what’s so great about The Good Fight; it tackles those things that do resonate in a real way. And this season with the protesters, and that looming threat of violence, and just this idea that in the same way that Carmen is immune, we become immune to that. Was it tense on set for the final season? What was the feeling like for you?

Charmaine Bingwa: Oh, I would say a combo of sentimental slash kind of rough, but loving. So it felt like all of those things together, because you’re letting go of something that’s meant so much to everyone. But because you’re all coming together to do it, it’s actually kind of joyful, even though it is hard to do.

Sarah Steele: And also, we were shooting during times that were horrible moments for our country where we were all together. So it was a kind of like life imitating art thing of like, these horrible things would happen, and we’d be on set and we’d just be devastated. But we had each other, and we were also shooting something that hopefully makes a tiny dent. I think it helps us [to] feel it together and not feel completely powerless.

The Good Fight Season 6 Synopsis

In the upcoming season of The Good Fight, Diane feels like she’s going crazy, struggling with an uneasy sense of déjà vu, from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to voting rights to Cold War aggressions returning. Meanwhile, the lawyers of Reddick & Associates wonder if the violence that they see all around them points to an impending civil war.

Check out our other interviews for The Good Fight as well:

• Andre Braugher
• John Slattery
• Michelle & Robert King

New episodes of The Good Fight season 6 drops Thursdays on Paramount+.