Here's why you'll never see Kalinda without her boots on The Good Wife

By: Start TV Staff     Posted: March 25, 2019, 3:02PM

On The Good Wife, Kalinda Sharma is incredibly hard to faze. Formerly the assistant to Peter Florrick, their one-night stand thankfully doesn't get in the way of her friendship with Alicia for long, which means we see plenty of the always secretive, occasionally violent, boot-clad femme. 

The character of Kalinda is played to indulgent perfection by Archie Panjabi, who snagged an Emmy for her juicy role back in 2010. In an interview with The Guardian, Panjabi explained how Kalinda's fashion choices tied into her character and how important it was for her to get the look right. She said, "When I first did the pilot, I brought my own costume – I always do that for a job because I think it fits the best and helps you get into character – and I had some Nike boots which had a bit of a heel and I wore jeans."

But wardrobe didn't want Kalinda in jeans. They wanted her in a skirt. Panjabi didn't like it, but she tugged the tight skirt on, and that's when she came to one of the most important realizations she made when discovering just who her character really was. She said, "But then what I realized is, she doesn't show much flesh. It's all tight and zipped up and you rarely see a thing. I've tried wearing shoes but it doesn't work. Her walk changes. I can only do this character in boots."

So even though Panjabi had other designs in mind for Kalinda, the boots came out, and throughout the series run, they stayed on right up until she left the show to step into the cast of Blindspot in 2016. She told The Daily Beast that year, "It was time for me, for many reasons, to unzip the boots and step into another show."

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