How Carrie Preston turned Elsbeth Tascioni into a female Colombo

You just never know where Chicago lawyer Elsbeth Tascioni is going to pop up next. She was the most clueless and disconcerting legal mind in The Good Wife, a series not short on eccentric lawyers and judges. She then reappeared in several episodes of The Good Fight, and has ended up with her own series entitled, simply, Elsbeth in which she is charged with supervising the activities of the New York Police Department (NYPD) in general and Captain Wagner in particular, helping them solve criminal cases as she does so.

Elsbeth puts center stage a character who moves fluidly beyond the margins of conventional behavior. It’s also put a spotlight on Carrie Preston, 56, the actress who plays her. Accustomed to supporting roles, Preston now heads up the cast of one of the best-performing series on American free-to-air TV, renewed for a second season in 2024, with double the number of episodes, moving from 10 to 20.

Turning a secondary character of one series into the protagonist of another has not always worked, as Carrie Preston was aware. “It was something we were concerned about,” she explained in Madrid. “But what we’ve done is we’ve practically created a new series. We took this character who is familiar to the audience and put her in a whole new world. A lot of people watching the series never saw The Good Wife or The Good Fight. They’re just seeing this strange, new, unconventional character in the middle of a format that’s very familiar — the police procedural.”

When Robert King, co-creator of The Good Wife along with his wife Michelle, described the Elsbeth character to Preston 14 years ago, he compared his protagonist to a female Colombo. Her continual absent-mindedness, out-of-the-blue questions and comments, and intuition were all reminiscent of that quirky detective played by Peter Falk. Now, Robert and Michelle King have gone further and have even replicated the structure of Colombo with the viewer seeing the crime to be investigated in each episode.

In an era when TV is constantly trying to wow the viewer, Elsbeth takes its cue from a more classic style of television that some may find less demanding than the more common whodunnits. “You know, you don’t have to think too much or be stressed about who did it,” Preston explained. “Instead, the audience can have a fun and relaxing time watching TV. I think we all need something like that, the way the world is now.”

Elsbeth Tascioni has a very particular way of speaking, moving and behaving, using silences, unexpected appearances and a variety of gestures that allow us to see how her brain works. “Fourteen years ago, I started bringing very specific idiosyncrasies to the character as well as a particular manner and demeanor, and the scriptwriters wrote to around them,” explains Preston, who loves Elsbeth’s infectious positivity. She also acknowledges that playing someone so particular brings with it certain challenges. “She talks a lot, so there are a lot of lines to learn,” Preston said. “And the way I play her, she’s someone who thinks one thing, says another and her body does something different again. All of that has to be well thought out and it takes time. She’s one of the characters I have had to spend the most time preparing.”

It is an effort that seems to have paid off. Of all the roles she has taken in an extensive career, she reckons Elsbeth Tascioni is the one that has had the most impact on her. “This character has changed my life,” she said. “I won an Emmy with her, and that has helped boost my credibility and get me other roles. When Robert and Michelle King were trying to get this series off the ground, it also helped that I had already been earmarked for the role.”

Elsbeth’s character seems harmless. Absent-minded, and dressed in flowery, somewhat outlandish attire, and invariably weighed down by huge bags, she uses her shambolic demeanor to catch suspects off their guard, encouraging them to underestimate her, a trait that any woman, Preston, included, can relate to. “It’s very likely that there were those who thought, ‘I don’t know if Carrie Preston should star in the series....’” she said. “And look, here I am. I think it’s worked. There are a lot of people who tell me they see themselves reflected in her. That says a lot about the script and how we present the character. In a way, she represents people who are on the margins and we’ve put them in the center.”

The actress has been married since 1998 to Lost actor Michael Emerson. Both have spent the last few years attached to Robert and Michelle King productions, she as Elsbeth Tascioni and he as the diabolical Leland Townsend in Evil. Preston has only good things to say about the King couple. “They are brilliant screenwriters and also brilliant producers,” she said. “They know how to bring other people into their world and empower them. For example, while they are the creators of Elsbeth, the actual showrunner is Jonathan Tolins, who has been a screenwriter with them for many years. They’re very loyal to the people who work with them and, clearly, they’ve been very loyal to my husband and me.”

Preston smiles and even blushes when asked if Emerson might appear in Elsbeth. “I think he will, yes,” she said. “I don’t know in what role, but now that he’s finished his series and is free [Evil has wrapped after its fourth season], I’m hoping they’ll write something for him. I’ve been in his series, so it’s only fair that he’s in mine.”

Finally, a question that any follower of the series will have asked: what does Elsbeth Tascioni carry in her over-sized bags? “And why so many bags?” she added with a laugh. “I don’t think I should tell you what she is carrying, because whatever you’re thinking is sure to be much more interesting. I think she carries everything she thinks she might need. It could be anything from books to a sandwich in case she gets hungry, another pair of shoes... Who knows. What I did want is for there to be no bags once Elsbeth finally catches the killer and solves the case.”

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