ELSBETH: Carrie Preston on the ‘Almost Unreal’ Joy of Bringing Elsbeth Center Stage

Nearly 14 years after Carrie Preston’s Elsbeth Tascioni was first introduced on THE GOOD WIFE—and after making 19 appearances across the series and its spinoff THE GOOD FIGHT—the character is getting her own showcase in the upcoming CBS series ELSBETH. (The drama debuts Thursday, February 29 at 10/9c.)

“As an actor, every time I see the name Elsbeth, I squeal inside,” Preston tells Give Me My Remote. “I still can’t even believe that it’s actually happening—that the name of the show is the character. So I’m extremely grateful and humbled by the whole thing. And treating every moment as if it’s the last, just with such utter delight and appreciation.”

For Preston, who has been acting in television shows for more than 25 years, this marks a turning point: Her first time as the lead on a series. “To be in a leadership role like that is something that I’ve certainly done in movies, but not on a series,” she says. “And I’ve always dreamt of that. I’ve been doing this a long time and if that dream didn’t happen, it wasn’t like it was gonna bum me out; I have a great career. [But] right now it just feels almost unreal that we’re at this place. It started off doing a couple of guest spots 14 years ago.”

The actress remained busy between previous guest spots playing the eccentric lawyer—including starring in TRUE BLOOD, CLAWS, and CROWDED—but the longevity of Elsbeth has been special.

“To play her so long, they say you regenerate cells every seven years,” she points out. “So I’ve regenerated two or three times since I started playing this character. So it feels fascinating to me, as well, to trust all the previous history, but also dive into the unknown [in this show] because she is in a completely different genre now.”

While the previous shows showcased Elsbeth’s skills in the legal world, the spinoff finds her in entirely new territory. “She’s dropped right down the middle of police procedural,” Preston previews. “So that’s fun. But it makes me a little nervous because I want to make sure that it’s still the same person that we’ve known before.”

In ELSBETH, the title character moves from Chicago (where THE GOOD WIFE/THE GOOD FIGHT were set) to New York City. Rather than try cases, Elsbeth tags along with NYPD officers in an investigative role. There, she makes reluctant friends with Captain C.W. Wagner (Wendell Pierce) and Officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson).

“We’re going to be honoring the structure of a police procedural—this police procedural, hour-long drama, but a comedic character dropped out in the middle of it,” Preston teases. “So a little bit of fish out of water, which is helpful because nobody really takes her too seriously. And, you know, whether or not she uses that by design or not is something that I never want to tell people. I want the audience to find her as mysterious as the other characters do. I have my own thing that I’m doing and thinking about all that, but I like that there’s unpredictability about her.”

And there’s an echo of that unpredictability in the series itself. THE GOOD WIFE/FIGHT creators Robert and Michelle King wrote the pilot, which filmed pre-WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. After the WGA strike concluded, showrunner Jonathan Tolins and the writers got to work crafting season 1…but the actors couldn’t be involved in any discussions until their strike concluded in November. (The series is one of only two new first-run scripted shows to bow on CBS this season; TRACKER is the other.)

But Preston—who was a regular on the picket lines—shares she’s been thrilled to sit back and see what the writers come up with.

“I’m definitely one of those actors that trusts the writers,” she says. “Like, I can’t dream up things as well as they can; I never would have dreamt of Elsbeth being in New York and becoming a [de facto] detective. That was Robert and Michelle King. I am somebody who really gets excited—it’s like Christmas Day when I get a script and I open it up. I think, well, okay, how am I going to bring that to life? And so I do everything that I can to take what they’ve written and elevate it.”

“If I hit a point where I don’t understand something or think I have a suggestion of something I’d like to try, I will go to them with that,” she continues. “But I’m in pretty great hands. Robert and Michelle did the pilot; now we have Jonathan Tolins as the showrunner. He’s been writing for [the Kings] and with them forever; he has an incredible career as a writer on television and plays and all that. And he’s assembled a wonderful room.”

And with early cases featuring the investigations into the murders of a college student, a co-op board president, and a reality TV star, “they’ve been dreaming up all of these scenarios for Elsbeth since the writer’s strike ended,” Preston acknowledges. “I kind of feel like I’m the new one coming in. They’ve given me little ideas along the way of what’s coming and it all just sounds like candy to me. So I’m good to go with whatever crazy scenarios they want to throw my way.”

ELSBETH, Series Premiere, Thursday, February 29, 10/9c, CBS

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