Cush Jumbo From ‘The Good Fight’ Says Producers Didn’t Accommodate Her After Having a Baby

Cush Jumbo, who plays Lucca Quinn on the Paramount+ drama The Good Fight, said that producers did not accommodate her after the birth of her child.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Jumbo opened up about her struggle with producers to get fairer hours after giving birth. The Good Fight, which also stars Christine Baranski (Mamma Mia!) and Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones), is a spin-off of the CBS series The Good Wife, which Jumbo’s character also appeared on from 2015 to 2016. Jumbo played Quinn for the first four seasons of The Good Fight and appeared as a guest star in season five. 

While filming the second season in 2018, Jumbo was pregnant. Jumbo told the Financial Times that just two weeks before giving birth, she was filming scenes in high heels and that only four months after the birth of her child, she was due back on set. 

“I couldn’t get back in my costumes if I didn’t lose the weight,” she said. “To lose the weight, I had to stop breastfeeding.” Because filming in New York often required 15-hour days, Jumbo said she barely saw her son awake. “I could go four or five days without seeing my four-month-old awake…. It was really making me quite low,” she said.

To make more time for her son, Jumbo asked producers if she could shave her head and wear a wig, to save time in the morning that could be better spent with her baby. She had to arrive on set early to get her hair straightened and styled, and a wig could save an hour and a half. But producers, Jumbo said, told her she couldn’t shave her head because her hair was too important to the character. 

“I was really pissed off that a show that was so female-led, [where] the story that we put out into the world was that we supported women, said no to me,” she said. 

Although her role as Lucca Quinn jump-started her television career, Jumbo never worried about getting fired for fighting back. “At that point. I. Didn’t. Care,” she said. “Ask any woman who has a six-month-old baby whether they start to care about the minutiae of stuff. When someone tells you you can’t see your baby, you will rip their throat out.”

When filming ended, Jumbo was “so enraged that I took a taxi home from the set to the barbers, and said, ‘Shave my head.’” A wig was made, and when Jumbo returned for the next season, she saw her son every morning.

Jumbo continued to play Lucca Quinn on The Good Fight for two more seasons in a main cast role, and appeared as a guest star in season five, which aired earlier this year.