Why Matthew Perry's Role In The Good Wife Had To Be Cut Back

Matthew Perry will always be fondly remembered for his role as Chandler Bing on "Friends," but fans would be remiss to overlook the late actor's other television performances in series like "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and "The West Wing," the latter of which earned him two Emmy nominations for outstanding guest actor in a drama series. It was his role as the slimy, self-serving lawyer Mike Kresteva in "The Good Wife" that The Guardian called "​​his first truly great post-Friends role."

Kresteva is first introduced towards the end of Season 3 in "Blue Ribbon Panel," in which he chairs an investigatory panel on a police shooting. Kresteva's true colors emerge quickly, and he has no problem manipulating Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) and blatantly lying for the sake of advancing his own career. In the following episode, he announces his run for Illinois State Governor against Alicia's husband, Peter Florrick (Chris Noth).

Despite the build-up towards a juicy showdown against Noth's Florrick, Perry made his final "Good Wife" appearance in a Season 4 episode in 2013, ultimately appearing in four episodes. Perry was initially slated to have a nine or 10-episode arc on the series, but had to back out to shoot his own comedy series, "Go On," which ran for one season between 2012 and 2013. The two series filmed on opposite coasts, making Perry's "Good Wife" arc an impossibility. Luckily, he was able to reprise the role of Kresteva on the spin-off series "The Good Fight" in 2017.

Matthew Perry was busy in 2017, wrapping up his run on "The Odd Couple," playing Ted Kennedy in "The Kennedys After Camelot," and starring in his play "The End of Longing." He also appeared in three episodes of Season 1 of "The Good Fight." Mike Kresteva is still getting into the same hijinks in the spin-off, where he figures largely into the Ponzi scheme storyline. He tries to tank Reddick, Boseman and Kolstad much like he did the Florricks, but this time his incessant lying gets the better of him.

Perry relished reviving the villainous role. "He's a really fun character to play because he just lies all the time," Perry told TV Guide in 2017. "You know he's lying. The audience knows he's lying. He knows he's lying. He doesn't care. So it's a really fun bad guy to play."

Critics were also taken with Perry's performance. In the wake of Perry's untimely death on October 28, the New York Times' Margaret Lyons wrote that his performances in "The Good Wife" and "The Good Fight" "revealed his subtle gifts as an actor." She continued, "Perry's bobbing and weaving on 'The Good Wife' is charged with spectacular little choices."

Fans also loved watching Perry's turn as odious slimeball Kresteva. As one Redditor wrote, "The fact that an actor can make me feel so positively toward him (FRIENDS) and can also make me hate them so much simultaneously (TGW, TGF) shows how good he was."