The actress reflects back on a decade growing up with her character Marissa Gold while being surrounded by acting legends in ‘The Good Wife’ and ‘The Good Fight.’

By " cosmic " circumstance , as Sarah Steele order it , the swelter August day we meet in Greenpoint became a tiny farewell party not just for the fare end ofThe Good Fight , but to say goodbye to the neighborhood itself . The Paramount+ legal play ’s soundstage , tucked off in an industrial sack not far from the imposing , bulbous silhouette of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant , was a seven - moment pass from her boyfriend ’s flat . The following day , he ’d move into herBrooklyn Heights co - op . " I know Greenpoint and we ’ve had such a merriment , free part , " Steele tells me over cocktails and a vegetarian pipe bowl at the customs birch - paneled record ginmill Eavesdrop , not even a full block away from one of her preferred classic Greenpoint resort , Five leave , at the northern tip of McCarren Park . " We lived half of our life in this neighborhood . "

Over the past 11 years , the 33 - yr - erstwhile Steele has been trekking to North Brooklyn to play Marissa Gold in bothThe Good Fight , which just commence streaming its sixth and final season , andThe Good Wife , its Emmy - deliver the goods primogenitor starring Julianna Margulies as the titular wife resuscitating her hibernating legal vocation . Initially , Steele was cast as Marissa , the wisecrack 18 - year - old daughter of Alan Cumming ’s political strategian Eli Gold , for a two - episode arc in Season 2 during a time in her life where she already felt come off and jaded about the business enterprise . " When you do n’t deal about showbiz is when you get your skilful opportunities , " quips Steele , who manages to fit large vitality , deferential humility , and self - assure sureness into her 5'0 " frame . A scholarly person at Columbia University , she had just reelect from Seattle , where she was hanging out in the observational theater scene and sit a intuitive feeling of originative dismissal when the tryout opportunity popped up on her phone while she was walking out of a yoga class . " I say , ' Okay , this fits into my Christmas break , ' " Steele sasses in evoking her young ego . " I think I walked in with a actual Marissa Gold authority that I do n’t necessarily by nature possess , but I was just having a minute where I was like , ' I do n’t even care about mainstream art , ' and I walk in not giving a fuck , and I sustain the business , of course . "

Eventually , a two - episode bit part , where she ’s introduced sardonically eye - wheeling during a spat with her dad , turn into a recur use inThe Good Wife’slast two seasons , often counseling Margulies ' Alicia Florrick through oeuvre and personal way out with surprisingly astute wisdom . ( After shooting episodes of Season 6 , Steele would share a van with Cumming to Times Square for their respective night gig performing inThe Country HouseandCabaret . " That was very bonding , " she says . ) She learned atThe Good Wife ’s wrap political party that the series ' creators , Robert and Michelle King , wanted her back for the spinoff serial publication , along with Christine Baranski reprising Diane Lockhart and Cush Jumbo as Lucca Quinn . On the set ofThe Good Wife , Steele let in she was " whole starstruck " by Baranski . " We had no scenes together , really , " Steele tell . " She just come up to me one daylight and was like , ' You ’re so great on this show . ' " ForThe Good Fight , however , she ’d be an integral part of the series , share scenes with Baranski in practically every episode and learning to love , as all the lawyer show say , The Law .

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" What ’s beautiful about the king is they get people they like and then the whole populace open up , " Steele says about the spouses ' penchant for deploy certain actors , including the the likes of of Carrie Preston , Gary Cole , and Mike Colter , who presently stars as a Catholic non-Christian priest inEvilafter playing a button - up drug lord in theGood - verse . " Who would ’ve ever thought that it would lead to everything it ’s lead to ? "

It would have been unacceptable for Steele to predict that she ’d be besiege by acting legends — Baranski , Audra McDonald , Delroy Lindo , Mandy Patinkin , and many more — for all of her 20s and change , but she knew she wanted to act by the time she was 8 years erstwhile , when she overheard a minor in the schoolhouse cafeteria talking about taking playing classes . " I just had a jolt in my whole trunk where I was like , ' That ’s it . That ’s what I ’m think to be doing , ' " remembers Steele , her body shooting up straight as if reliving the second all over again . " I was like , ' I ’m done with concert dance . I ’m done with sports . This is my affair . I know it . ' "

get up alfresco of Philadelphia with an older sister and medico parents , nail her life history in the arts at such a untested eld was n’t exactly monish , but her parents approached the idea from a pragmatic sense of headache . " My mom especially would say things from the time that I was 9 years old : ' Well , I just do n’t want you to end up await tables , ' " Steele says in her best concerned - mother voice before deadpanning : " I was like , ' I ’m not really opine about that . I ’m 9 . ' " As her house often recounts , her dada lambasted the classes as " an incredible waste of money . " Still , Steele joined a company at the Walnut Street Theater , the oldest playing - artistry locus in the United States , " which was vast for me , " she says , praise Philly as a great field of operations metropolis , in part because of its proximity to New York , where she was capable to start auditioning for parts at a young age . " I really have been in it since I was a baby , " Steele says .

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Her first braggy Hollywood break come when she was 15 , starring alongside more legends as Adam Sandler and Tea Leoni ’s in-between - school girl in 2004’sSpanglish . " That was just a crazy time , " Steele recalls . " I felt like an unknown . I feel like I was on another satellite . LA , to me , might as well have been Mars . " She had make weight and wore a fat courting for the part , and was broadly disorientate . " I became this just all different variety of persona because the truth was , when I didSpanglish , I was already sneak up with boys . I ’m 15 , but that character was so innocent and I could feel and see that ’s what that globe wanted from me . So it felt like I play a part during the whole experience . "

Though it launched her on - filmdom career , which would ladder up into little parts on shows likeGirlsandGossip Girlover the years , the experience of filming in Los Angeles sparked a authorization of self - conservation within her . " After that I really just go home and I did n’t work again for yr , " Steele says . " I could n’t have put it into words at the time , but I intend I knew , If I stay here , it will ruin me at this age . I can get back to it once I have power and agency and know a little number more who I am . I finger so thankful to my younger ego for knowing that . "

In Marissa Gold , Steele articulate she feel like she " hit the pot " with a series that respected both her and her character ’s maturation . " The anxiety of working as a kid is like , ' Are people conk to let me grow up ? Are people pass away to countenance me also have a journeying as an grownup or not ? ' " Steele say . " And I get to do this weird , wild thing where I actually did it as one character , but that was like , ' Well , hopefully the great unwashed now see that I ’m a grownup , ' because Marissa ’s a adult , but she was n’t really when I generate the part . "

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DuringThe Good Fight ’s run , Marissa has risen from assistant to private investigator , mentor by Nyambi Nyambi ’s assuredness - manoeuver Jay Dipersia , to a shop assistant in a kangaroo court run by Patinkin ’s quirky but jurist - minded judge Hal Wackner . By the starting line of Season 6 , she ’s a full - on attorney , blowing her first hearing thanks to a shell of the yelping . ( Meanwhile , Diane is getting into a novel form of microdosing with the aid of a physician toy by John Slattery . ) Even through all of these slip to find Marissa ’s calling , Steele has feel an almost eerie kinship with the fiber she portrays .

" I think the more they got to know me and the more I played Marissa , the more similar she became to me , " she says . " The Kings have an eldritch ability to just read who you are and dislocate it into the script in a way that you ’re like , ' await , did I tell you that about me , or did you just somehow infer that ? ' " She mentions a scene from Season 6 where Charmaine Bingwa ’s first - class attorney Carmen Moyo motivate into a wide loft flat with no design of occupy it with things like a lounge or tv set . " Charmaine was like , ' How did they bang I have no furniture ? ' They are in spades ace . "

Steele commit another lesson of Robert King ’s rarified prowess , specifically at the multitasking on display during the episodes he ’s directed . " It is astounding to watch him and everybody ’s trying to shade off him because it ’s just so enthralling , " she tell . " He ’ll literally be direct , speak to people on a Zoom , editing , and reading the news program . It ’s mad . I do n’t understand how he does it , but he does . He has like four affair going on and then pick up it when he comes in to direct you . "

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That sense of controlled chaos riddle the episodes ofThe Good Fight , chew over a pathos that ’s endeavor to make horse sense of more and more flummox current events when there ’s seemingly no sense to be find . The pilot air in February 2017 , barely a month after Donald Trump was inaugurate , and the 10 episode that keep up felt so ripped from the headlines that you ’d think the writer ' way was roil out weekly playscript on a gruelingSouth Park - ian timeline . When I bring this up to Steele — that it feel like something just encounter in the world — she finishes my sentence : " It ’s onThe Good Fight . I know . It ’s uncanny . " She ’s grateful she ’s had the opportunity to be on a show that speaks so directly to the political present moment even as realism felt more and more detached from itself . As the season have spread over the past five long time , The Good Fighthas get increasingly more surreal ; Jay , feverishly ill with COVID , hallucinates talking to Frederick Douglass , Karl Marx , and Jesus , and Diane , finger desperate about the crumbling social order , chats with the latterly deceased Ruth Bader Ginsberg .

" I do n’t see how you could even make artwork that ’s not phantasmagoric and addressing that we are hold out in a dystopian reality flop now , " Steele says . " It ’s like , ' I do n’t opine I desire to do a garish musical properly now , ' even though I think we postulate that — we require escapism too . For me , personally , I really like being with the show that was cover the stuff that we were all thinking about and torment over . "

At the same time , some filming days were exceedingly difficult to bear . Unlike an office gig where you’re able to log off of Slack after societally distressing news take place , Steele and her castmates had to press on with their shooting docket . She remember one of this time of year ’s hardest twenty-four hours of , " which also speak to Michelle and Robert ’s psychic powers , almost . We were shooting a setting where they overturn gay wedlock the twenty-four hour period that [ the Supreme Court]overturned [ Roe v. Wade ] . Christine had just been shooting it . She ’s always standing up completely straight , so poise , so giving , so sweet , and I just got to go down and — I’m almost last to cry lecture about it — she was just kind of rumple on some stairs . I was actually like , ' I do n’t need to mess up up my makeup . I ca n’t even talk with her or I ’m go to start sobbing . ' But I did . I was just like , ' Hi . You okay ? ' And she was like , ' How can you be okay ? ' And I was like , ' I do n’t be intimate . ' It was atrocious . It was really strong to work that daylight . I was like , ' I require to just wave up on my flooring and mother fucker . ' "

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At the jump of Season 6 , objection have push through outside the police business firm ’s Downtown Chicago agency . real bombs seem to be exploding , but 20 - odd stories above , the attorneys scarce bat an eye at the cacophony as they debate defensive measure strategies and manage the addition of a unexampled wild - identity card party boss played by Andre Braugher . ( " He ’s interpersonally the funniest person we ’ve ever had on the show , " Steele posits . " As an player , he ’s very serious , he ’s very intense . So good . And I did n’t expect to just be howling laugh . " ) Eventually Marissa starts obsess over the warning signs of a country on the brink of civil warfare . By all history , The Good Fight ’s terminal season is aiming to go out on a note that shatters the realism - bending mirror it set up for itself . " Without give too much away , it ends in a big divergence for us , that being it ends very physically . Suddenly we ’re doing stunts and spyglass is exploding and stuff that we do n’t normally do , " Steele teases about the finale . " It was so dissimilar and I loved that because it just feel like everything ’s a mess , the domain ’s a pickle , and we ’re all take breaks to cry because it ’s the last day . "

When the series wrapped in late July , McDonald and Baranski give culmination talking to about finding and following your joy and being proud of putting " something into the world that was n’t trash . " Steele , who says both player have been " incredibly " supportive since day one , was understandably emotional . " I could n’t believe that Diane Lockhart was not sound to exist , " she say . " She ’s done this for 13 years , and my genius was exploding that that was her last shot as Diane . "

Steele has n’t fully processed that the Marissa Gold chapter of her life is behind her either . " Not to compare myself to her , but what Sarah Jessica Parker says about Carrie Bradshaw : It ’s just like she ’s never go , " Steele says . " And same matter [ for Marissa ] . She ’s so specific . She ’s absolutely still in me . " She did an audition the day before we gather for a character that was " much furious than Marissa , " which she enjoy . " I think not until I ’m really , really deep into another character will I really feel like , ' Oh , Marissa . Oh , Marissa ’s drop dead . How weird . ' "

SinceThe Good Fightfinally speak what the show had been careful to avoid throughout its run — what materialize to Alicia Florrick — I jest with Steele about reunify Marissa and Alicia . She laughs yet responds as if the whole cast has been kick around ideas for a spinoff of the spinoff . " Well , I be intimate actually Christine said that on one of the last mean solar day , she was like , ' I would have a go at it it if they just kept go across that flannel mullein Julianna go by it to me , and if I overtake it to you and Charmaine , ' " Steele say . " I was like , ' Yeah , I roll in the hay that . I ’d be intimate to take the baton . ' I reckon there ’s a diminutive part of me still being like , ' Me and Alan , another spinoff ? ' A diminutive footling part of me is take for out promise of a Marissa and Jay spinoff , but I intend , it ’s very improbable . "

At the second , however , Steele is giving herself tolerance to not feel the atmospheric pressure of accepting another intense , yearslong role right off . These days , she ’s finding herself inspired by the work of her tightlipped acquaintance , with whom she ’s made a fistful of documentary shorts . But she remembers what Baranski told her on the first day they ever work together . It was the final day of shootingThe Good Wife , with a big party scene and a send - off to the series ' characters . after , Steele would lead to her theater gig perform inThe Humans . " I derive up to her and I just say , ' Thank you so much for always being so nice . You ’re incredible , and it was so nice to meet you , ' and she just said , ' Oh , no goodbyes in this business organization . I ’ll see you backstage at your show , ' " Steele remember . " And then the ' no goodbyes , ' of course , was we did a serial publication for six year together . That is the kind of thing that , as a stager , she knew we are not done working together . Whether it ’s this , whether it ’s something else , there ’s no goodbyes . "