Will ‘The Good Wife’ Ever Employ an Entire Class of Tony Nominees? They’re Getting Closer

On last night’s episode of The Good Wife, Lockhart-Agos-Lee’s talent search brought a prospective new hire named Monica into their midst. The storyline itself dealt with diversity (or lack thereof) in Lockhart-Agos’ hiring practices, a good and important storyline, albeit one that keeps up this season’s frustrating separation between Alicia and the Lockhart/Agos lawyers. But the real intrigue for me was that Monica was played by Nikki M. James. She may not have been much of a familiar face for some viewers, but for those who keep tabs on Broadway comings and goings, James is best known for being one of the original cast of The Book of Mormon, for which she won a Tony Award in 2011.

As soon as I saw James, I went right to the internet to look up the 2011 Tony Awards, to see how many of that year’s nominees have been The Good Wife guest stars. A quick tally of the 2011 Tony nominees said that Nikki James is the 11th member of the class of 2011 to have guested on The Good Wife. She joins fellow Featured Actress in a Musical nominees Tammy Blanchard and Laura Benanti as Good Wife guests.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. The Good Wife casts a lot of Broadway actors because it films in New York City (despite being set in Chicago; and you can really tell), where all the stage actors are. It’s also a show whose storylines have room for a LOT of guest stars. But there are a lot of shows that film in New York, and a lot of shows that have guest stars, and even still, The Good Wife majorly stands out for how consistently it casts Broadway’s best and brightest.

It has been my solemn belief for some time that The Good Wife is steadily approaching a kind of stage/screen crossover singularity wherein one day there will be an entire class of Tony Awards nominees from a single year who have all appeared on The Good Wife. Until last night, this was an idle theory. Then I started to research.

I went back 15 years and found that, while no single Tony year has approached full Good Wife employment, some years are approaching the crucial tipping point of majority Good Wife employment. In a given year, 40 performers are nominated for Tonys across their 8 acting categories. The closest The Good Wife has come is 16/40, and that has happened twice, in 2012 and 2007. The Good Wife has employed enough Broadway veterans as guest stars to fill up nearly half of a Tonys ballot for two separate years. See for yourselves!

And really, we shouldn’t even be counting the Lead Actor in a Play category most years, since that category is usually filled with big movie stars slumming it on stage. Tom Hanks is never going to be on The Good Wife. Neither is Denzel Washington. So taking that out of the picture, the Tonys class of 2012 sent a good 46% of its non-movie-star nominees to The Good Wife. 2007 sits just behind at 43%. That is insane! That’s like if a movie had not only nine Oscar nominees in its cast, but nine Oscar nominees who were all nominated in the same year. (And before you start wondering, the best possible version of that would be: an all-female remake of The Fellowship of the Ring starring Julia Roberts, Joan Allen, Laura Linney, Ellen Burstyn, Juliette Binoche, Marcia Gay Harden, Frances McDormand, Judi Dench, and Kate Hudson.)

The Tony Awards classes with the highest concentration of The Good Wife guest stars:

2012: Nina Arianda, Christian Borle, Michael Cerveris, Michael Cumpsty, Danny Burstein, Stockard Channing, Linda Emond, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Linda Lavin, Audra McDonald, Jan Maxwell, Cristin Milioti, Ron Raines, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Condola Rashad, Jeremy Shamos (16)

2007: Brooks Ashmanskas, Christian Borle, Michael Cerveris, John Cullum, Boyd Gaines, Jonathan Groff, Gavin Lee, Rebecca Luker, Audra McDonald, Jan Maxwell, Donna Murphy, David Hyde Pierce, David Pittu, Martha Plimpton, Julie White, Karen Ziemba (16)

2004: John Cariani, Michael Cerveris, Kristin Chenoweth, Tovah Feldshuh, Margo Martindale, Jefferson Mays, Audra McDonald, Omar Metwally, Donna Murphy, Denis O’Hare, Anika Noni Rose, Karen Ziemba (12)

2003: Tammy Blanchard, Brian Dennehy, John Dossett, Linda Emond, Melissa Errico, Harvey Fierstein, Malcolm Gets, Eddie Izzard, Dick Latessa, Robert Sean Leonard, Mary Stuart Masterson, Denis O’Hare (12)

Over that same span, there are TWO instances where The Good Wife is merely one actor away from having cast an full category’s worth of performers, both from the class of 2007.

Best Lead Actor in a Musical, 2007: Michael Cerveris for Lovemusik (CHECK), Jonathan Groff for Spring Awakening (CHECK), Gavin Lee for Mary Poppins (CHECK), David Hyde Pierce for Curtains (CHECK).

Missing: Raul Esparza, who was nominated (and should have won, but that’s another story) for Company and is currently beholden to NBC (Hannibal, Law & Order SVU) so probably won’t be coming to The Good Wife anytime soon.

Best Featured Actor in a Musical, 2007: Brooks Ashmanskas for Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me (CHECK), Christian Borle for Legally Blonde: The Musical (CHECK), John Cullum for 110 in the Shade (CHECK), David Pittu for Lovemusik (CHECK).

Missing: John Gallagher Jr., who won the Tony that year for Spring Awakening, and who has now been freed of the chains of The Newsroom, where he starred opposite Grace Gummer. Just have him show up on The Good Wife connected to Nancy Crozier, played by Mamie Gummer (the greater Gummer). It’d be poetic, and more importantly it would be Good Wife Tonys BINGO, and we’d all get a free drink.

In addition to Esparza and Gallagher, there are a BUNCH of Tony-nominated Broadway actors who I’m positively shocked haven’t already been on The Good Wife. What has John Larroquette been doing lately? Judith Light? Christine Ebersole? Debra Monk? Daniel Sunjata the dramaturg from Smash? Just one episode with Vanessa Redgrave, Frank Langella, and Kelli O’Hara as a WASP family squabbling over an inheritance would send the numbers skyrocketing. We already saw Vanessa L. Williams (2002 Tony nominee for Into the Woods) in the preview for next week.

The beauty of it is that the way The Good Wife goes fast and furious, any category that currently matches 3/5 (there are twelve between 2000 and 2015 that do) could easily jump up to 5/5 within a span of one episode. The best possible pairs of actors whose casting would fulfill this are, in order:

• Patti LuPone and Victoria Clark (2011 Featured Actress in a Musical) as daytime talk show hosts suing over breach of contract.
• Sara Ramirez and Kelli O’Hara (2005 Featured Actress in a Musical) as opposing counsel and a woman accused of selling her husband’s sperm on Craigslist.
• Scarlett Johansson and Rosemary Harris (2010 Featured Actress in a Play) as Cary’s sister and Diane’s mother, respectively.
• Courtney B. Vance and Tony Shalhoub (2013 Featured Actor in a Play) as FBI agents investigating the disappearance of Taye Diggs’ character.

Anyway. This point is this: the Good Wife / Tony Awards Tipping Point IS within reach, people! We’re getting closer each week.