More Details on "The Good Wife"'s New Gay Character

When CBS president Nina Tassler responded to my question about GLAAD having recently given the network a failing grade for its gay visiiblity by revealing that Sh*t My Dad Says, Rules of Engagement and The Good Wife were all adding gay characters, I might have been the only person in the room not caught off guard. I'd previously been told the news off-the-record, so when Tassler made the announcement, none of the creators for each of those shows knew that information was about to be revealed. Which isn't too say they were necessarily upset by the revelation.

In fact, Robert King, executive producer for The Good Wife, shared some of the details about the part which hasn't yet been cast. 

The character will be Alicia Florrick's (Julianna Margulies) younger brother who is a professor at the University of Oregon. He moves to Chicago when he lands a position as a a visiting professor. When asked by one of his students why he hasn't been around, the character says "I'm gay and Peter is homophobic." (For readers not familiar with the show, Peter [Christopher Noth] is Alicia's husband.)

King says Peter isn't homophobic but that Alicia's brother  uses "...that to create a division between them and yet he really loves his sister and it's kind of a fun relationship between sister and brother."

How large a part will the character have? Will he appear in every episode? "I'd like to say yes," says King. "It really comes done to the schedule of the actor."

Tassler's announcement made it sound as if the three shows she'd mentioned were adding gay characters because the network's lineup was so lacking in GLBT visibility. But King says that wasn't the case for The Good Wife: "We take the GLAAD [rating] seriously too, but we already had built him in two months ago. We just like the idea of a brother who comes in like a breath of fresh air and from a different color than we've seen Alicia coming from a different environment and a different world. I wouldn't say he was gay happenstance, but gay is part of his personality. But it's not the leading part of his personality. We want people to be people first."

What will his personality be like? "We're playing him as ... Alicia was kind of the older, responsible sister and he was more the freewheeling younger brother. It was always because she was the good girl that he was able to be the fun and slightly irresponsible younger brother. What's great about that character is that it gives us access to Alicia's backstory to find out a little more about her family, her parents and her upbringing. He's five years younger than Alicia's character."

King also noted that the character is currently single because he had just left a relationship.