In “Hitting The Fan,” the game-changing episode of “The Good Wife,” lawyers Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) and Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry) finally left their firm, Lockhart/Gardner, to start their own firm, Florrick/Agos.
Czuchry had a bruising scene with Christine Baranski’s Diane Lockhart, his boss.
As Diane berated him as an ingrate while clutching his just-confiscated company laptop, the junior lawyer would not allow himself to be cowed, telling Diane that she brought the coup on herself through her broken promises.
Watching this scene, it was clear that Cary, fresh out of law school in Season 1, had come a long way.
Czuchry, who was originally determined to go to law school, but whose bad LSAT scores turned him toward acting instead, is thrilled at how Cary has become a power figure on the show.
“He owns this firm and he’s excited about what’s ahead,” says Czuchry, 36. “I feel like he’s an adult now.”
Robert King, who created the show with his wife, Michelle, says that Czuchry’s initial handling of the role, conceived as a spoiled, James Spader-type, helped it to evolve.
“We were looking at a lot of standard yuppie types [for the part],” says King. “The writing was very much, you knew who this guy was — mama’s boy, Ivy League, probably a lot of money and connections from dad. What Matt brought was this frankly, ‘off’ quality, and a kind of innocence. There’s a sense of looking at the world like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ ”
“Matt helped propel the part out of being a stock character,” says Michelle King. “Then he helped shift Cary away from being the antagonist to becoming one of our protagonists.”
It sometimes seems like every character on “The Good Wife” has loved and hated every other character at some point. When Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) flirted with joining the new firm, she and Cary confided in each other while really, he was giving her the run-around, and she was feeding the new firm’s information back to their old bosses. But on a show where no sin makes a relationship irreparable, fans shouldn’t think the sparks have disappeared completely.
“We’ve always thought of Kalinda and Cary as a throwback to ‘Dangerous Liaisons,’ ” says Robert King, referring to the film about sexual alliances and betrayals starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich.
“[These are] people who use love and sex as part of a chess game. Cary is really attracted to Kalinda, but all these maneuvers keep getting in the way. The question is, can he move past them to find that [his] desire still exists for her?”
While the attorneys claw and scratch for position and influence, there’s a kinder veneer off-screen. Coming up on their 100th episode, the cast recently celebrated in part by donating their time to help rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in Far Rockaway.
“People are still suffering out there,” says Czuchry, who went for a week without power during Sandy at his West Village home.
“That was incredibly challenging, so you can imagine [what it’s like for] people who don’t have walls a year later. So we helped put up some of those walls, and put insulation in people’s ceilings. There were a lot of hugs and a lot of tears. It was incredibly emotional for the homeowners we helped out.”
Five seasons into the show’s run, Czuchry’s fame has hit the point where the Internet spreads strange rumors about him, as he learned when he received a text from a friend congratulating him on his engagement.
The gossipy tidbit appeared on some Web site — and, says Czuchry, who is single, had not a grain of truth.
“I didn’t even know about it,” he says, “and then about two weeks ago, a friend of mine sent that text. I asked him what the hell he was talking about.”
With a nine-month shooting schedule, Czuchry, who was raised in Tennessee and attended the College of Charleston in South Carolina, says he doesn’t have much time for dating.
“I don’t mind being single. I don’t mind being in a relationship. Either is fine with me,” he says. “I’ve enjoyed the long relationships I’ve had, and I’ve enjoyed being single as well.”
This flexibility comes in handy, because with the current sea change on “The Good Wife,” there’s no telling whom Cary Agos will consider a friend, enemy, or lover as the season progresses.
“There’s been this huge explosion, but that doesn’t mean that anything is completely broken,” says Michelle King. “[These relationships are] fractured, and what’s interesting is seeing how those relationships can be repaired.”