The Good Fight’s Nyambi Nyambi on season four and the fallout from ‘punch Nazis’

When you’re an actor on a TV show, you don’t expect to cop of torrent of abuse for something your character says. Especially when it’s about Nazis.

Nyambi Nyambi never expected to find himself the target of an online attack but that’s exactly what happened.

“My goodness, I got so much hate,” he told news.com.au. “Like in every single way possible that you could be hated online, I got it.”

What was Nyambi’s supposed crime? A “crime” that attracted an intense level of vitriol, the kind in which a prominent white nationalist told Nyambi that he “will never raise your hand against a white man”.

(And that particularly horrible line was one of the more “publishable” comments.)

A character he plays on a TV show, The Good Fight, which returns for its fourth season on SBS this week, gave a piece-to-camera monologue in a 2019 episode addressing the rise of white nationalist ideology in mainstream debate, ending it with a dramatic overture that it was “time to punch a few Nazis”.

The scene involved Nyambi’s character Jay DiPersia being thrown into a scenario in which he was fending off a blatant voter suppression tactic on the part of white nationalists trying to intimidate black Americans.

Apparently punching Nazis is less of a problem when Indiana Jones does it. If a black character in modern-day America does it, well…

“It was weird, because that was something you thought all Americans could get behind,” Nyambi said. “A literal war was fought to stop Nazis.”

Nyambi Nyambi was bombarded with online hate after a scene in The Good Fight last year

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The episode wasn’t just a commentary on the current state of hate-stirring and race-baiting in the US but acknowledged centuries of violence against black Americans trying to exercise their democratic right.

After the episode premiered, and that particular clip was posted online, sections of the conservative media and ultra-right wing groups decided they didn’t like the idea of a TV network drama “advocating” for violence against – and you’ll get a kick out of this – a “political group”.

If the whole thing is making you snigger at how ridiculous it is, that’s a natural reaction. But Nyambi’s experience in the aftermath wasn’t so amusing.

“It was very interesting, and then some people jumped onto the hate without really knowing what it was about,” Nyambi continued. “And, mind you, I’m playing a character. This is a character in a television show. It was just weird.

“It was very surreal. Unfortunately, we’re living in a time where it’s very divisive right now. And as we’re moving through 2020, it seems like the surreal is what makes sense right now.”

If the past four years has been a surreal epoch, The Good Fight has been one of the few shows that has truly captured the absurd political vibe of this moment.

The Good Fight is, ostensibly, a legal drama spin-off from the seven-season The Good Wife, but it builds each episode around its characters’ experiences of urgent social issues including immigration reform, voter suppression, racial politics, privacy, government surveillance, pay equality, police brutality and so much more.

Threaded into its episodes are strong perspectives on the rot at the heart of capitalist democracies. Nyambi is part of an ensemble cast that includes Christine Baranski, Delroy Lindo, Cush Jumbo, Audra MacDonald, Michael Boatman and Sarah Steele.

Nyambi credited that pulsing relevancy to creators and showrunners Robert and Michelle King and the writers’ room.

When people suggest topics the show could touch on, Nyambi points out to them that the show has already tackled it.

“I trust the Kings wholeheartedly to take on important issues. Not only the Kings but all the writers, they’re super smart and super on top of it,” he said. “It’s going to be interesting when we go back to work [for the fifth season].

“You know, do we do a COVID episode or season? There are so many possibilities. We’ve talked about police brutality.

“I think the issues the show presents are issued that have always been an issue, and for whatever reason, we’ve either taken it for granted, not given it its due weight or sort of ignored.

“What the Kings have done a great job is they tale a hot-button issue and really look at it from all the angles and really have a discussion about it.

“They’re really good about asking us our thoughts on certain things. What I love about anyone, any creator is those who are OK with saying, ‘I don’t know’.

“Because I think to enter the realm of discovery, you have to begin with ‘I don’t know’ and be open to discovering where the story is, where the truth is, where the funny is, where the humanity is, and where the tragedy is.”

Nyambi Nyambi with co-star Cush Jumbo in The Good Fight. Photo Cr: Patrick Harbron/CBS

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Nyambi, who was born in Oklahoma to Nigerian parents and graduated from New York University with a Master of Fine Arts, working on The Good Fight has been a rewarding learning experience.

“It has been a deeper awakening. It’s also been a way to explore some of the things that I may personally be feeling. It gives me a chance to explore them.

“Whether I agree or not with what a character may have to say, it’s still an opportunity for me to explore and empathise, to come to know and understand.

“It gives me a chance to actually do research on those things, where I may not have done so before.”

The Good Fight’s fourth season streamed in the US earlier this year but was cut short when its production was shut down because of the COVID pandemic. Instead of its regular season run, it finished after seven episodes.

The seriously sharp and smart show starts with the proposition of “What if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election?”, a dreamlike scenario for Baranski’s Democrat character Diane Lockhart. It starts off as wish fulfilment, but it soon turns into a nightmare.

The season ends with an episode which considers how Jeffrey Epstein really died – it’s absolutely wild, very curious and extremely entertaining.

The Epstein episode embodies what Nyambi means when he said The Good Fight has that appetite for discovery, to find the emotional truth of a world that baffle and terrifies in a constant war where misinformation muddies rational thought.

“I really admire the fact the show really explores all of these issues. Whether we’re right or wrong, at least we’re exploring them.

“I think people need to take the time to explore and empathises, to really study up on issues as opposed to just assuming that because someone said something that it was correct. You want to find multiple sources to back up the things you hear.

“And I love that about the show, The Good Fight does that.”

The Good Fight season four premieres tonight at 9.30pm on SBS

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