‘The Good Fight': Alan Cumming on the ‘Even Darker’ Fate That Was Planned for Eli Gold
thewrap.comDemocratic campaign manager Eli Gold (Alan Cumming) made his debut on “The Good Fight” on Paramount+ over the last two episodes of Season 6, visiting Chicago to deal with tricky legal troubles brought about by a right-wing prosecutor attempting to call him out for interference in the 2020 election.
While he was in town, he attended a fundraiser for the Dems, and was nearly killed when a man burst out of a bathroom stall at the event, shouting an anti-Jewish epithet and shooting Frank Landau, who the man had mistaken for Gold.
But that wasn’t the original version of the story from showrunners Robert and Michelle King, according to Cumming. “The original plan was even darker. … Eli was going to die,” Cumming said, noting he signed on to do two episodes (featuring his character, who viewers first got to know on CBS’ “The Good Wife”) with Eli dying in the second. “They’re such great writers, I was really fascinated to see how they would kill him,” Cumming added, referring to creators and executive producers Robert and Michelle King.Cumming shot his first episode of the show, went away to do another job, and when he returned, he learned the original plan had been tossed out.“They called me and said, ‘Oh, Alan, we can’t kill you,’” he explained.
The story Cumming heard was that a producer cried when they read the script that killed off his character, so it ended up being rewritten.
Read more on thewrap.com