‘Elsbeth’ Star Carrie Preston Talks What to Expect in ‘Good Wife’ Spinoff

Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) has arrived in the Big Apple!

In his new series Elsbeth, The good wife The standout has left her defense attorney behind as she begins working with the NYPD to oversee her cases. Although the Justice Department has given her an assignment, her new colleagues, including Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce), aren’t sure Elsbeth is the right person after she gets involved in the case of a murdered dancer. Elsbeth believes, rightly, that she was murdered by her teacher (played by Preston). True Blood her co-star Stephen Moyer). Finding an ally in Officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson), she solves the case, but at the end of the episode we discover the real reason Elsbeth is in New York: to investigate Captain Wagner.

Preston teases that the road ahead for his beloved lawyer will only get tougher. “There is a wonderful tension because she loves this job and she has to answer to the Department of Justice. “She has to answer to the people who brought her there, so she has to move forward with this investigation, but she discovers that she really likes Captain Wagner and finds him incredibly upstanding,” she explains.

EW spoke with Preston about playing Elsbeth again, the comedy of the new show, and some of the adventures ahead for her character.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You’re playing Elsbeth again! What makes her a character you want to return to, and what made this show, which leans more toward crime than law, the right vehicle for her?

CARRIE PRESTON: She is so full of wonder, curiosity and joy. She keeps me guessing, so I draw inspiration from her. Those contagious qualities.

(Robert and Michelle King) created this show borrowing the structure of colombo, meaning, you know who the killer is, so the joy of watching the show is seeing the cat and mouse between the killer and Elsbeth. You see her reconstruct how the criminal did it. It is how it was done and not who did it. Elsbeth is so unconventional in the way she does things that criminals underestimate her and don’t see her coming.

One wonderful thing about the show is that it brings a new energy that is different from the two (original) shows. The good wife and The good fight They were dramas, and Elsbeth was just a bit of comedy. Elsbeth It’s a comedy with a dash of police procedural drama. Plus, we have these amazing guest stars who are already drawn to this show because the writing is so rich. There is a lot of dialogue and there is subtext to play between the characters in this game of cat and mouse that occurs in each episode. It’s fun for me and that’s what’s so special about this show.

At what point did you start to think that Elsbeth was a character who could carry her own story?

I don’t like to be presumptuous about any of that, so every time I played her, I approached it like it was the last time, because as a guest actor you never know. You just serve the main story. I would say season 3, which was my second arc The good wife, was when we really managed to move forward with the alchemy between writing and acting. It could then function as the heavy weapon they brought when a case couldn’t be solved.

Elsbeth has been a great scene stealer in the past. Was she worried about Elsbeth being the main character on her own show?

Yes, keeping your feet on the ground and being able to hold it for an entire episode in every scene. I had to learn to calibrate, something I’m still learning because we’re in the middle of filming the season. Elsbeth is an extraordinary character and I’m working on that now to make sure she doesn’t come off as too strong. Find that rhythm.

We see Elsbeth starting to bond with Kaya in the pilot, but obviously this investigation is a roadblock for the new friends. What awaits you?

What I love about Elsbeth is that she really appreciates women who are better built than her and admires Kaya even though she is younger than Elsbeth. She discovers that this young woman is very self-possessed and that Elsbeth can be so clueless that she doesn’t really master being grounded. Furthermore, she sees in Kaya someone she can guide, because she (Elsbeth) knows how to look at a situation from a different angle to illuminate it. Both are going to infect each other. I love having a female friendship on television that isn’t competitive. It is a support.

There’s definitely some internal conflict with Elsbeth because, essentially, she’s not completely telling the truth about why she’s there with these people she’s becoming very attached to, and that’s hard for her. She says in the pilot that she now really wants to be on the side of truth. As a defense attorney, she worked with people who have done really indefensible things and now, being in this situation, she sees it as a way to finally be the truth seeker that she always wanted to be and yet she is being disingenuous to people with the ones that are growing. about.

You spend a lot of time with Stephen Moyer’s character in the pilot. Do you have a standout scene or memory?

There was one day, pretty early in the shoot, where Stephen and I had a seven-page scene, and that’s unheard of for television. Now, in editing, it’s down to three pages, but it was so fun to work with Stephen because we did it. True Blood Together for seven years, so I have a history with him. We both come from theater, so it felt like we were doing a one-act play. This show has really wonderful long scenes that the actors can really, to make a True Blood pun, sink your teeth.

What scene was it?

It was the one where I’m in his office and I’m trying to sniff him to see if he’s using the right deodorant, which is one of the main clues I’m trying to use to catch him.

In addition to Moyer, Elsbeth has a ton of interesting guest stars, including Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jane Krakowski, Retta, and Blair Underwood. Can you share some fun stories from the set about working with any of them?

Well, Jane Krakowski and I had to climb on one of those climbing walls and we didn’t have any rehearsals. I don’t do this and I think she had done it once with her son, so it was really extraordinary because we had to climb the wall while saying a lot of quite complicated dialogue. Blair Underwood and I have some cool moments on a tennis court, so they’re definitely putting in these set pieces and we’re having a lot of fun with them.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Elsbeth airs Thursdays at 10 pm ET/PT on CBS.

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