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'Good Wife' plans life after Will's death

Josh Charles talks about his exit from 'The Good Wife.' / CBS.com

Sunday's episode of CBS' The Good Wife shocked viewers by killing off Will Gardner, but this week's shows the equally dramatic aftermath, as former legal partner (and sometime lover) Alicia Florrick and other characters grapple with the news.


'In many ways this episode is about the ripples,' says Robert King, who with his wife Michelle is co-creator and executive producer of the legal drama. With seven episodes left this season, beginning with Sunday's (9 p.m. ET/PT), 'the bottom line is, the major event doesn't go away.'


Speaking in a panel discussion moderated by Charlie Rose after a New York screening of that episode, Josh Charles, who played Will for nearly five seasons, said he decided to quit last March, when his contract was up and he 'felt burnt out; I felt a little fried. I was ready for something different.'


But when the Kings called Margulies, also a producer on the show, to break the news, 'my head just started spinning,' the actress says. 'I became Alicia the lawyer, figuring out how to negotiate his contract.' With production nearly completed on the fourth season, 'we didn't have time to say goodbye to the character, and it sounded like he was going to just disappear. I couldn't accept that, and I said, 'If this is going to happen, let's do this right.''


So Margulies tried to convince Charles, who was about to marry and thinking of parenthood, to return for a partial fifth season, urging him to think about the expense of preschool. 'I went right to the kid thing, and it was disgusting,' she says with a laugh. 'I said, 'It's money in the bank, 15 episodes.'


It worked; he caved. And the Kings were grateful.


They tricked the audience, teasing a potential renewal of Alicia and Will's romantic relationship: 'We wanted to give the audience the expectation that near the end of the year they could get back together.'


But instead, they wielded Will's cruel fate.


'It was sad for us, the thought of this character we love dying, but it felt like anything else would have been a little too easy,' says Michelle King. 'And what this gives us was something more interesting for Alicia' for future episodes.


Margulies says they'll explore 'how she starts to question her choices, and suddenly it's all black and white. The choices she makes...are incredibly careful, and mostly about her.'


For Charles, who will direct two more episodes this season, his onscreen gunshot death at the hands of a murder-defendant client (Hunter Parrish) gave him 'the fantasy of what do people say at my funeral. In a very fictional sense, I've gotten to live that this week.'


Many were accepting. But not all fans took it well. A Twitter correspondent told Charles her mother was distraught at the news, so he called the woman: 'We had a really nice chat; she loves the show,' he says. 'She was a bit devastated, but I talked her through it.'


And his favorite reaction came from a neighbor who's a real-estate broker, who expressed her sorrow for Will's fate, then brightly added: 'Does this mean you're moving back to L.A.? Because I'd like to sell your apartment.'


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