Apparently, a kiss can change your life.
Archie Panjabi, who won an Emmy for playing private investigator Kalinda Sharma on "The Good Wife," opened up to Radio Times about her decision to leave the CBS drama series.
During the interview, Panjabi said it took kissing actress Gillian Anderson in the BBC/Netflix series "The Fall" to help her realize how much her "Good Wife" character was affecting her.
In the third episode of "The Fall's" second season, Anderson's character, Stella Gibson, kisses Panjabi in a bar to get a man to stop bothering them.
"When I was kissing her, Allan Cubitt, the show's creator and director, had to say, 'Archie, can you hold back?' because Gillian was supposed to take me by complete surprise," Panjabi told the Radio Times. "I didn't think that I was very forward in [the scene], but obviously after a while a character starts to affect you. I thought, 'Okay, I think it's time to go now.'"
Panjabi's character on "The Good Wife" does not identify herself has being either gay or straight, however she has relationships with both sexes. The actress has described her character's sexuality as "fluid."
Last October, Panjabi announced that she would be leaving the drama series after the current sixth season. The actress reportedly signed a "development/holding deal" with 20th Century Fox Television, which will allow her to star in her own pilot produced by the studio this fall.
"Archie is an Emmy-award winning dramatic actress, and rightly so," Sharon Klein, executive vice president of casting at 20th Century Fox, said in a statement (via The Hollywood Reporter). "Her work on 'The Good Wife' has been extraordinary, and the time has come for her to star in a project of her own. We couldn't be happier that it will be with us."
Show runners Robert and Michelle King, added, "Archie is an amazing actress who helped build Kalinda from the ground up as an enigmatic, powerful and sexy character. It's been a pleasure to write for her, and we'll be sad to see her go; but we still have her for the rest of season six, so let's not exhaust our goodbyes yet. We look forward to meeting all the wonderful new characters Archie brings to the screen. But either way, we're keeping the boots."
