Ian West/PA Wire/APThe Good Wife and Game of Thrones is finally colliding. No, Diane Lockhart is not taking the Iron Throne (though she so would), Rose Leslie has joined the cast of the upcoming Good Wife spinoff.
Leslie will play Maia, Diane's (Christine Baranski) goddaughter who joins up with her after passing the bar exam. According to CBS, the character is a "key part of Diane's plan for the future."
"We're thrilled to have Rose on board," Robert and Michelle King, executive producers, said in a statement. "We needed a young actress who could hold her own with Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo, and Rose is perfect. She's real, she's strong and she can play comedy. If we designed an actress from the ground up, we couldn't have done better."
The series also stars Jumbo as Lucca Quinn and Sarah Steele as Marissa Gold. The events of The Good Wife spinoff pick up a year after The Good Wife series finale. In the CBS All Access series, a huge financial scam destroys Maia's reputation and wipes out Diane Lockhart's savings. Forced out of Lockhart & Lee, the two then join Lucca at a new Chicago law firm.
When viewers last saw Diane Lockhart, she was slapping Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) after being thrown under the bus by her colleague to save Peter Florrick (Chris Noth) once again. Alicia then straightened up and walked off into her future. There's talk of Margulies guest starring at some point.
"It's difficult only because you don't want to taint something that felt complete to us," Robert King told E! News while promoting BrainDead. "One of those things we're seeing if it works is seeing if Julianna can guest on the show. It's not going to be going in the past, it will be continuing in the future…It is its own story and you want it to be its own story, so that is difficult and that's one of the things we're trying to break."
Other key supporting Good Wife players like Carrie Preston and Jess Weixler have also made it known they want in on the spinoff. "Well, you know as actors these things, sadly, are not in our hands to decide," Preston told us. "But if they were to call, of course I'll be there."
The Good Wife spinoff will premiere on CBS proper first before moving to CBS All Access, the network's streaming platform. The Kings are returning to serve as showrunners on the series and co-wrote the episode with Phil Alden Robinson.
The Good Wife spinoff will debut in February 2017.