Carrie Preston picks her favorite ‘Elsbeth’ season 2 scenes

Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) has closed another season’s worth of cases.

After establishing the eccentric lawyer’s journey into crimefighting, Elsbeth was able to build upon that foundation in season 2. The series started Columbo-style, with the audience knowing who committed the crime and watching Elsbeth figure it out, but occasional episodes scrapped that plot device (as seen in the cameo-filled season finale) and introduced Judge Milton Crawford, a multi-episode villain played by Preston’s real-life husband, Michael Emerson.

While the series — a spinoff of The Good Wife — operates as a procedural, the connective tissue between them is how creators Michelle and Robert King Preston’s standout moments of the season is how they allow the audience to get to know Elsbeth on a deeper level. “I’ve been playing this character for 15 years, and the first 14 of it were just periodically as a guest star. Now that I’m playing her every day, I get to keep deepening her and understanding more about her. I really treasure those times when she is brave enough to enter into the unknown,” Preston tells Entertainment Weekly.

Here, she looks back on three standout moments from the CBS drama’s second season.

A psychic knocks Elsbeth off her game

Marilyn Gladwell (Tracey Ullman) is a professional psychic whose wealthy clients don’t make moves without her — a red flag for Elsbeth, who suspects Marilyn of being involved in the murder of a client’s stepson. As a left-brained, non-believer, Elsbeth meets the psychic, set on debunking her work while getting one step closer to solving that episode’s murder. Instead, Marilyn uses her abilities to “channel” Elsbeth’s grandmother, leaving the skilled investigator shaken.

“I always love the opportunity to show a deeper, more vulnerable side to Elsbeth because she’s always so mentally forward,” Preston says, “I think she feels everything. She’s very practiced in being able to move through those emotions with action, and she’s obsessed with her work. It really does fuel her.”

She continues, “Elsbeth thinks she knows everything, but she doesn’t sometimes, and she’s willing to accept that here.”

While she is deeply rattled by the mention of her grandmother, Elsbeth is focused on finding the truth about the death at hand, even if it means a willingness to believe in something mystical.

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“Somebody who comes at things from an evidence-based perspective now has to accept some things can’t be explained, and that’s okay too,” she says, “It doesn’t deter her from finding the evidence she needs to put this woman away for the crime she committed.”

Preston, who was close to her own grandparents, got an unexpected call from her mother the morning she was set to film the scene. Decades ago, her paternal grandmother made handmade dolls for Preston and her sister. After they were discovered in an attic, the Elsbeth star’s mom sent her a photo of them. “I walked into that scene with all of those emotional tools that allowed me to really drop down into it. It made for a very special day for me as an actor, as a fan, and as a granddaughter,” she shares.

As a massive Tracy Ullman fan, Preston was ecstatic to play opposite the iconic comedy figure. In fact, one of Preston’s best friends played Ullman’s assistant in a project, and the pair ask her to sign a copy of her 1998 book Tracey Takes On. “Tracy Ullman holds a lot of emotional weight for me as a fan and as an admirer of her work,” she says.

Given the dream sequence in the season finale, there’s a world where we could meet Elsbeth’s granny — so who would Preston love to play the role? “It has to be somebody who’s loving and bigger than life,” she says, “If it was a flashback, then Bette Midler would be phenomenal. We’ve all been dreaming about having her on the show in some capacity.”

Elsbeth’s past sparks a confession

Word of a past client’s corrupt deeds makes its way to Elsbeth’s precinct, so to help her close her latest case, the lawyer-turned-investigator takes the opportunity to visit a holistic wellness center away from the city.

During her undercover stint, she meets her “journey partner” Sheryl (Marcia DeBonis), who Elsbeth forms a bond with quickly. Sheryl’s openness results in Elsbeth sharing that she’s on a case and about how she feels about her past as a defense attorney — even though she’s supposed to be undercover.

“It was a special scene because we see Elsbeth saying that she doesn’t know how to ask for help. So it was another clue into the character,” Preston says.

The scene is the tipping point for Elsbeth, who is struggling with being honest about her criminal defense attorney past with her current team of justice seekers. “I’m really sold on this idea that she wants to correct and atone for some of the wrongs that she did in the past by being smart enough to work the legal system to get some people off who really shouldn’t have been,” she says of her past, which is when The Good Wife fans met Elsbeth.

Preston sees Elsbeth being about a woman reinventing herself later in life while also seeking atonement. “She moves away from a world in which she’s very comfortable into a world that she loves but is extremely uncomfortable in. She takes to it like a fish in water, but there are sharks in the water, and she’s learning her way,” she says.

The episode was a wonderful reunion for Preston, who is friends not just with guest star DeBonis but episode director Nancy Hower. Preston and DeBonis are part of a group called the Hyphenates, a collective of women who support each other’s work as well as their personal lives. Hower was Preston’s peer at Juilliard, and the pair appeared in a play directed by Vanessa Redgrave, also starring the legend as Cleopatra; Preston played Julius Caesar, and Hower played her sister.

Those personal connections brought an added level of comfort for Preston’s emotional scene. “It was one of those magical moments where all I needed to do was show up with the beautiful writing. We were able to elevate it because of all those wonderful circumstances,” she recalls.

She does admit it hit a personal chord, having to look DeBonis in the eyes and admit to lying: “I would never want to have to say that to her in real life.”

The one time Carrie Preston sparred with Matthew Broderick

Preston loves the physical aspect of Elsbeth, and fencing opposite Matthew Broderick provided her a great opportunity for it.

“I’m always saying to our showrunner, ‘If I’m doing something with my body, please don’t cut to the close-up because it’s all part of the storytelling of who this woman is,’” Preston explains, “I always think of her as, her mind is thinking one thing, her mouth is saying another, and her body is doing a third.”

The scene saw Elsbeth investigating Broderick’s Lawrence Grey, an educational consultant who promises wealthy parents Ivy League futures for their children — regardless of whether they make strong applicants. She finds him fencing, so the two spar as she questions him, hoping to find some clues to help her figure out who killed a college admissions officer.

Neither Preston nor Broderick had ever fenced before, so they needed time to prepare. Due to Preston’s filming schedule, both actors trained with the other’s stunt doubles — they finally got to fence together for the first time when filming the scene.

Preston regularly includes what she calls “Els-bits” to use her physicality to bring the unorthodox investigator’s unique energy to screen. At the end of her sparring match with Grey, Elsbeth clumsily using her flimsy weapon as a cane is a hilarious example of one of those tics.

“It’s a nod to all of those physical comedians, from Charlie Chaplin to the Three Stooges to Carol Burnett,” she says of the physicality she brings to the role. Preston doesn’t do them just for laughs; it’s important to her that they add to the moment because they are grounded in truth. Seeing her fidget with the helmet during her interrogation and swinging the sword around with reckless abandon is all part of that.

Similar to the scene with Sheryl, Elsbeth gets angry when the corrupt educational consultant criticizes her son’s professional choices, showing viewers a different side to the character. “She’s very good at being one step ahead. It’s way more fun to see her get knocked off her game for a second,” she explains.

Preston is happy to finally get to explore Elsbeth as a mother after previous shows only made quick mentions of her having children. Part of that is seeing her clash with her son, but also fiercely defend him. “All those doubts that people have as parents, it’s fun to see Elsbeth have them,” she says.