ELSBETH cast Wendell Pierce, Carrie Preston, and Carra Patterson visit 1515 Broadway in celebration of the series premiere | ©2024 CBS/Gail Schulman

If you have been missing COLUMBO these many years, ELSBETH is here to fill the void. Once more, here’s a series where we see a murder committed at the outset. It’s just that instead of Peter Falk playing a rumpled police detective who solves the crime, we now have Carrie Preston reprising her Emmy-winning role as Elsbeth Tascioni.

Previously a Chicago lawyer who was a recurring character on CBS’s THE GOOD WIFE and its Paramount Plus spinoff THE GOOD FIGHT, Elsbeth has moved to New York City to be a civilian oversight observer with the NYPD in ELSBETH. Like Columbo, Elsbeth is likely to be dismissed as simply eccentric by the culprits, who severely underestimate her skills of observation and deduction.

The series is in its first season Thursday nights on CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus. Like THE GOOD WIFE and THE GOOD FIGHT, ELSBETH was created by Michelle King and Robert King, who are also executive producers.

On a Zoom press conference call to discuss ELSBETH, Preston and the Kings join showrunner/exec producer Jonathan Tolins, Wendell Pierce, who plays police Captain Wagner, and Carra Patterson, who plays Kaya Blanke, the patrol officer assigned to accompany Elsbeth.

The Kings say that they love ELSBETH as a concept and a character. “We also love Carrie Preston, and we’re thrilled to work with her again.” They add that in the previous two series, Tolins “was Elsbeth’s voice in the writers’ room. And then Wendell Pierce agreed to join that marriage. Patterson also joined us – who we had worked with in an episode of EVIL [another Paramount Plus series also created and executive-produced by the Kings]. So, it was really fun to all get back together.”

ELSBETH Key Art – Season 1 | ©2024 CBS

The COLUMBO resemblance is strictly intentional, Robert King acknowledges. “I think we all discovered something about ourselves during the pandemic.” For the Kings, one of those discoveries was, “Every night, we wanted to watch an episode of COLUMBO instead of the eight movies that were thrown our way. And that just got us thinking [that] we always wanted to work with Carrie again.”

It also, of course, got them thinking about the structure of COLUMBO. “It’s a very witty build. It’s not about whodunit in that Agatha Christie way. It’s a how-done-it, which seems just as fascinating, if not even more fascinating, because it takes a wittier approach to puzzle-solving, or problem-solving, because the audience knows where this is headed, and then you could see the bad guy or bad woman reverse and try to get back at Carrie Preston’s character before she can solve it.”

Preston adds that there seemed to be something in the zeitgeist encouraging ELSBETH to exist. “Right after they had come up with this idea, there was this article in the NEW YORK TIMES [by] Elisabeth Vincentelli, and what she was watching during COVID was reruns of COLUMBO. And the last line of the article was, ‘We don’t need a reboot of COLUMBO, just give Elsbeth Tascioni her own show.’ So, I am the lucky recipient of said zeitgeist. Robert and Michelle throughout the years had said, ‘Oh, we would love to do something with you.’ They would bring me back periodically on THE GOOD WIFE and THE GOOD FIGHT, and the timing just lined up. And so, I’m extremely grateful.”

Tolins addresses the “how-done-it” factor. “One of the things that was a little bit scary was when Robert and Michelle called me and asked me to take this job was, ‘Oh, my God! Putting together all those mysteries!’ But it actually is a really fun form to work in. In our writers’ room, we call [setting up the murder] the one-act play that we open an episode with. And we see how interesting can we make these characters, and this crime, before Elsbeth comes into it. We play with, what do we tell the audience, what do we not tell the audience, what clues do we establish that they can try to find themselves? And which ones are we going to hide for Elsbeth to find? So, it’s actually a wonderful puzzle, and I think that’s one of the reasons why shows like this are so fun to watch.”

Pierce says that, at first, he was so engaged by the mysteries that he didn’t immediately recognize the COLUMBO influences. “It was going over my head. I was so into the thriller and the whodunit and the how-done-it of the story, it was months later when we actually started filming that I was like, ‘Do you realize this is kind of like COLUMBO?’ Because I was so into the crime stories, and the one-acts that they put together. And then I said, ‘Well, this is funny, too. I hope people really see and hear the humor.’ COLUMBO was three times as long as our show, so we really have to move the cases [along].”

What does Preston like best about playing Elsbeth? “Oh, my gosh! I love her mind! This is a brilliant woman who is so mercurial, so fast, she’s like quicksilver. She can by saying one thing, thinking another, and her body is doing a third thing. So, that is really fun to navigate, to map out, to play. I’ll spend more time in prep for this character than almost anything else I’ve ever played because of that, and I really enjoy finding out how fast she is with everything, what exactly it is that she is thinking, and why she’s saying a certain thing, and what’s making her turn this way and that. The writing helps with that, of course. But that’s probably my favorite thing about her, is her brain.”

Had Preston and the Kings known that Elsbeth would be getting her own show, would they have done anything differently with the character on THE GOOD WIFE and/or THE GOOD FIGHT?

Robert King replies, “I’ll speak only for myself. No. That sounds a touch like, ‘We did it all perfect.’ Maybe better, just say Carrie did it all perfect. No, I wouldn’t change a single thing.”

Preston is happy that having Elsbeth be the lead gives her more time with and knowledge about the character. “One of my favorite sayings is, ‘If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage,’ and so it’s always about the writing for me. To have been trusted with this incredible role for fourteen years, never knowing when I was going to play it again, has been truly a gift every time it comes up. They came to me with this opportunity to be the main course and not the side dish, just as an actor finding out more about this woman.

“When you only have a certain number of scenes, there’s only so much information that you can get. But when you’re there all the time, you’re learning. I’m discovering new things, especially the fact that she’s in this different situation. So, she’s a bit of a fish out of water. She’s very confident in the legal world, but she’s finding her way in this new world, and that’s fun. And with Jonathan and the writers, I think it’s going to be a nice new thing.”

In terms of that newness, Preston emphasizes, “This is decidedly not THE GOOD WIFE, not THE GOOD FIGHT. It’s lighter, it’s comedic in nature, you’ve got case of the week. So, it’s the same woman, but you don’t have to have watched those shows to dive into this show.”

Regarding Elsbeth’s relationship with her NYPD minder, Officer Kaya Blanke, Patterson opines, “It evolves pretty quickly. I think [Kaya] finds this unique bond that develops right away. The way I look at it is, Elsbeth is this fun breath of fresh air that Kaya didn’t know she needed. She’s a very dedicated, by-the-book NYPD officer, hoping to get the approval of her superiors. She’s not thinking Elsbeth is going to stick around, but as she does, she realizes that Elsbeth sees something in her, and she respects that, because she’s been trying to work her way up for a while, and I think a lot of people can relate to that. I know I’ve been in those positions, where I think if I just do the right thing, people will notice. It takes a while most times, because people are in their own world and sometimes don’t care. Elsbeth really sees something in Kaya, and so yeah, it’s special.”

Preston offers, “Both Kaya and Elsbeth are underestimated by people around them, and I think that they bond in that way as well. They see a mutual support system. And because Elsbeth has such a brilliant mind, I think Kaya, being younger, sort of learns from that unorthodox way of doing things.”

Pierce observes of his own character, “As a commander, I’m seeing the impact that it has on her. I see [Elsbeth as] this thorn in my side, this woman who gives me anxiety. There are these moments of epiphany were I ultimately see how she is having an impact on this young officer, and it spurs something in me to ask this young officer, ‘Well, what do you think about it? What is your investigative instinct on this? She’s obviously having an impact on you.’ And I see their relationship evolved, and that kind of softens my edges and eases my concerns about who this woman is [who is] investigating my department. I see the brilliance in her, and I love that epiphany and that observation of their relationship and how it’s growing. It’s fun.”

The ELSBETH pilot reunited Preston with her TRUE BLOOD costar Stephen Moyer (on that series, Moyer portrayed a vampire and Preston played a human waitress). Moyer guest-starred on ELSBETH as an unscrupulous acting teacher. “TRUE BLOOD holds a special place in my heart,” Preston relates. “My career took off in a way it hadn’t before that show, and so we all bonded. We made TRUE BLOOD kind of in a vacuum, and then it started airing. [Moyer and TRUE BLOOD costar Anna Paquin, now married to Moyer] were real cast leaders, and he’s such a personable person, so outgoing.”

Preston continues, “And so, when they were casting this role on ELSBETH, I kept thinking, ‘Gosh! [Moyer] would be so perfect, because he’s so charming, but he can also be really dark. Having him on set during the pilot was such a comfort, because the stakes were so high. Robert and Michelle wrote this gorgeous script with these epic scenes. This is a very dialogue-heavy show, and I wanted somebody who could really do that kind of scene work, somebody who understood that, and that’s Stephen. So, that just gave me real security in [making the pilot, which can be] a nerve-wracking situation. It was never that on this pilot, because of Robert and Michelle and Stephen and Wendell and Carra. It was a beautiful experience, the pilot time of my life.”

What is ELSBETH’s balance between comedy and drama? “I write everything funny,” Tolins declares. “I can’t help it. I feel like we spend most of our lives trying to make each other laugh, so that happens. But when you’re dealing with murder, obviously, and getting characters to the point where they will commit murder, absolutely there is drama there. I have a wonderful group of writers, and that room is very good at knowing when something feels right, when something feels too much or too little. Your writing is not a conscious exercise. You have to at a certain point feel like you get into the vibe of these characters and let the show lead you.”

Pierce loves the duality of the show. “I’m the guy who has the deal, the commander and the captain, doing his political thing and trying to hide some of his history. And I’m like a kid in a candy store with all the opportunities that are given in ELSBETH to do drama, to do comedy, to do really cinematic stuff, and at the same time deal with a lot of dialogue.”

Preston hopes that viewers “can sense the enthusiasm that we all have for this project. It’s called ELSBETH, but there are hundreds of people lifting her up and getting her out into the world. This is [an] incredible group of artists that I have the privilege of working with every day.”

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Article: Interview: The cast and creators of ELSBETH talk about the new CBS procedural 

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