-Our first guest tonight is
an Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress
you know from her work on "The Good Wife,"
"The Gilded Age," and the "Mamma Mia" movies.
She stars in the sixth, and final, season
of "The Good Fight" which premiers this Thursday
on Paramount+. Let's take a look.
-I really don't know why I'm here. [ Chuckle ]
Well, I think my world feels a little --
a little bit out of control.
I feel like we're on this hamster wheel.
No matter what we do, we just
end up back at the start, you know?
I used to believe in progress, that --
that...people learn from their mistakes,
that things got better, and --
and here we are.
-Please welcome back to the show one of our favorites --
Christine Baranski, everybody!
[ Cheering and applause ]
[ Funk plays ]
♪♪
-How are you?!
-I know. Back from summer vacation.
-Back from summer vacation. You're a working actress.
I feel like you don't really have your summers off.
-I didn't, not this summer.
I worked "Good Fight" through July
and then I had a day off
and then I went right into "Gilded Age,"
but I've had a little bit of time.
-Well, I was very lucky in the early parts of the summer.
We've talked in the past about that fact that our --
my children, and your grandchildren are very close.
-I know, the last time I saw you, really,
you were mounting an inflatable water trampoline.
[ Laughter ] -I was.
-I wish I had a video of it.
-I'm glad you don't have a video of me,
[ Laughter ] but you brought one
of your grandson. -I did.
-Do you want to set up the video?
And let me just say, I really appreciate,
as a grandmother, that you're going to share it with us.
[ Laughter ]
-Well, here's the thing. We have a long dock
and then we have a water trampoline
and the water trampoline kind of floats away.
Well, Christopher, my son-in-law,
jumped from the dock onto the water trampoline
and then Max, my oldest one, my eight-year-old,
went from the dock onto the water trampoline.
But Auggie -- -Yeah.
-Yeah, here's Auggie.
[ Laughter ] -I think you've set it up very well.
Let's take a look at Auggie trying to do the same.
-Ah!
-Oh!
[ Laughter and applause ]
-He's okay.
-He's fine. -He's fine.
-I mean, he's not going to be fine when he finds out
that his grandmother showed that on national television.
-No, actually, I asked him.
-Did you really? -He's very excited.
He's very excited. -That's great.
[ Laughter ] I mean, I will say,
my experience with Auggie is he's very robust.
I am not surprised that he was uninjured by that.
-No. But can you imagine needing rhinoplasty in first grade?
[ Laughter ]
I was delighted.
It's a very funny memory.
-So, my kids know you as Minnie,
which is what your grandchildren call you.
-Everybody, everybody at the beach, I'm just Minnie.
-You're just Minnie. It's great.
-I love and then they hug me, "Bye, Minnie,"
and "When are we going to Minnie's house?"
It's something that I'm very proud of,
that kids like to come to Minnie's house.
And you like it there, too, don't you?
-I do like it there a great deal.
I mean, now I'm a little worried about my privacy
because you share videos. [ Laughter ]
-My favorite was watching adults try and mount the trampoline
and then drag their kids out.
-Yes, I actually don't blame Auggie
for trying to jump on, because it's not as easy
crawling up the side ladder as you look.
I want to ask you -- So, we had a moment.
We were listening to the "Mamma Mia!" soundtrack,
as we do, and we realized
we could tell the boys, "Oh, that's Minnie's voice."
And it did not register with them at all.
It was too big a leap for their logic to make.
-Do you want me to make a house call
and sing all the song. -We would love you to come over.
[ Laughter ]
-♪ You can dance ♪
♪ You can dance ♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Do your...
I mean, you know, most of your work
is obviously, I would imagine, fairly adult.
Do your grandkids -- have they made the connection
that you are on-screen?
-They're curiously so uninterested.
They don't get all excited.
They watch "The Grinch," and it's like,
"Oh, yeah, that's Minnie."
But other kids come up, "Oh! Oh, you're in 'Mamma Mia!'"
"Oh, you're Martha May in "The Grinch."
And my own grand-- which is fine.
-Yeah. -I actually don't want to be
a famous person to them. -You want to be Minnie.
And you're an excellent Minnie. You can do both.
Speaking of doing both, you are playing two characters
about 100 years apart in American history.
-Both of them in despair about the state of the world.
-Exactly. -I just transfer one --
-It's helpful to remember that Diane obviously
is very in despair about the present.
But then Agnes thought we were in, you know,
we were going to [Bleep] 100 years ago.
-Yeah, she actually...
Agnes -- I do empathize with Agnes.
She's having the equivalent of a Trump hotel
built across from her brownstone on East 61st Street.
And they're just hauling in all these artifacts,
and it's all this, you know, display of wealth,
which Agnes finds just appalling.
These people think
they can buy their way into society with money.
And she thinks that money's going to just wreck the world.
And hello.
-She didn't do a terrible job of calling it.
Is it tricky? I mean, you know, obviously,
you're a seasoned pro at this sort of thing,
but when you're basically going back and forth
between seasons of these two characters,
do you ever find one bleeding into the other?
Is it very easy for you to keep them separate?
-I think it's important the way you speak, above all,
because once you're in that corset,
you ain't going anywhere.
It's just like, "Oh, yeah, I'm Agnes."
[ Laughter ]
But you know, Diane -- although Diana is well-spoken,
it's definitely a contemporary, like, kind of like
I'm talking now.
But Agnes, definitely, we have a speech coach,
and it has to be much more precise.
And the attitude and the whole manner
is so much more restrictive.
But, you know, it's a champagne problem for an actor.
"Oh, my gosh, I've got two shows.
I've got all these lines. I have to switch over."
I mean, I'm not going to complain.
-Yeah, you should do a master class of, like,
"How do you handle two leads?" [ Laughter ]
-So, somebody's got to do it. [ Laughter ]
-I have a lot more to ask you, especially
about the final season of "The Good Fight."
We'll be right back with more from Christine Baranski.