The show filmed two versions of the pilot due to the unexpected outcome of the 2016 Presidential election. As the production had erroneously assumed that Hillary Clinton would be a shoo-in, a second version was shot with Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) staring incredulously at her television screen as the announcement that Donald Trump had become the 45th President of the United States. For the duration of The Good Wife (2009), Diane even had a (photoshopped) picture of herself and Hillary on her office wall.
For the pre-credits sequence of exploding items in slow motion, co-creators Michelle King and Robert King hired visual effects artist Lawson Deming (The Good Wife (2009)) to create something quite different. In conjunction with f/x specialist Tom Ceglia, Deming utilized a camera capable of shooting 25,000 fps and a trunnion gun to fire both glass and steel balls at the fragile items. For the larger solid items such as the chair and table, they used a detonation cord capable of greater fragmentation. For the 40 seconds that make up the dynamic intro, the team spent 24 hours of actual shooting, 12 hours of testing, weeks of prop building, and days of editing to complete the sequence.
Robert King and Michelle King offered Julianna Margulies a three-episode deal for the first season, but she refused because the show's star is Christine Baranski and Alicia's presence would be distracting from Diane's story.