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SPOILER WARNING: This story discusses plot details from the latest episode of “Elsbeth,” which airs Thursdays on CBS.
Carrie Preston and Michael Emerson met 30 years ago during a production of “Hamlet” at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival — she played Ophelia; he was Guildenstern — and they married in 1998. Since then, they’ve acted opposite one another a few times: Preston made a guest appearance on “Lost,” playing the mother of Emerson’s character in a flashback and she also recurred as his fiancée on “Person of Interest.”
But Emerson’s arrival as a recurring guest star on Preston’s CBS show “Elsbeth” marks the first time the married couple play enemies.
“Listen, I don’t see him in my marriage,” Preston says, referring to the long hours required to play the title character of a procedural, as she and Emerson log on to Zoom with Variety from their home in New York City. “I had to get a part on the show just to see my own wife,” Emerson cracks.
Popular on Variety In the episode, titled “One Angry Woman,” Elsbeth gets summoned to jury duty (an obligation that means she’s finally a true New Yorker) and she lands on the jury of a murder trial presided over by an unusually difficult judge. Emerson plays the bespectacled Judge Milton Crawford whose haughty demeanor hides a much darker secret — that he’s committed the murder in question.
Naturally, Elsbeth is quick to sniff out Judge Crawford’s strange behavior, but she can’t put her finger on exactly what is off, setting up a contentious situation between the two as the trial progresses. By the end of the episode, it’s clear that this was only Round 1 for Elsbeth and Judge Crawford.
“Let’s think of him as the Moriarty to Elsbeth’s Sherlock,” Preston teases.
Read on as Preston and Emerson discuss their on-set dynamic — and as they pitch a few ideas for working together again.
It’s so fun to watch the two of y’all verbally spar. But I’m very nervous for Elsbeth, because this man is a cold, hard killer. CARRIE PRESTON: You should be nervous for her. This man is a cold-hearted killer who’s also extremely powerful.
Tell me how this all came together — because Carrie’s guest appearance on “Lost” began as an inside joke and you’ve both worked with Robert and Michelle King. How did the “Elsbeth” pairing come to be? PRESTON: Since the show started airing, people have been asking, “Who would be your ideal guest star? Who would you like on the show?” I said, “Well, wouldn’t it be fun if my husband could be on the show?” It wasn’t like it was my idea — anyone would be lucky to have Michael come on their show — it was all about Jonathan Tolins, our showrunner, and Robert and Michelle King, the creators, to find the right role for him. And I think they found it.
MICHAEL EMERSON: Because at the end of the day, we are both members in good standing of the Robert and Michelle King Repertory Players, so if something comes up and we’re right for it, they’ll plug us in. Carrie kept saying, “Brace yourself, because there’s going to be a phone call here somewhere along the line.” I felt like, “Bring it on. That’s going to be fun.” They won’t bring me in if it’s not something pretty choice, and it turned out that it was.
Michael, what did you make of Judge Crawford? Because this character is a different kind of dastardly than Leland on “Evil.” EMERSON: When you are on a series for a long time, you forget what it’s like on day one of something new. Where you have not established a character yet and you’re having to come up with it. You’re having to make something three-dimensional in a hurry, so it was tough the first day.
The first day I shot was the murder, and I’m just a guy with a baseball bat. I hadn’t really settled on all the different angles of his character. They came eventually, as we went along. It makes you realize how nice it is if you’re on a series for a long time — you really don’t think much about coming up with a character. You have been doing it. You just put the clothes on, and you’re it.
PRESTON: The guest stars pretty much always start with the murder, because that’s the only thing that I’m not in. Generally, I’m on another unit finishing up the previous episode, so we’ll have two crews filming at once, so the bad guys often come in and immediately commit a murder. It gets you right into it!
Is this the first time y’all have played characters that are foils to one another? EMERSON: I don’t think we’ve been antagonistic to one another. We’ve always had scenes of warmth and love — not like enemies.
PRESTON: We haven’t gone against each other in that way. He plays a lot of evil characters and a lot of dark characters, and I play a lot of light-hearted ones, and to see both of those energies go head-to-head, it was really fun. It was truly, like good and evil.
EMERSON: It’s like a collision of universes.
What’s interesting about these characters is they respect each other’s intellect, but they’re opposing forces. What’s that been like to play? PRESTON: Michael and I don’t rehearse together. We don’t even talk about the scenes at home. I don’t know what that says about us, but I guess I implicitly trust him. I also like the element of spontaneity that comes with not knowing what the other actor is going to do. Come in knowing my role, having an idea of where I want to go with it, but it’s more like playing jazz than anything.
We found a very easy rhythm playing these scenes, mostly because we have such a trust for each other, and the scenes were incredibly well written. If it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage. We had great writing to work with, and then we just tweaked it. We had a wonderful director who helped us find little nuances, and we just ran with it.
What was the first scene you had together? PRESTON: We did the courtroom first. Those are long days; they’re very arduous to shoot and the poor judge is always the last to be on camera.
EMERSON: It’s rough being the judge.
PRESTON: Because they want to shoot the bigger stuff first, and then whittle it down to where it’s just one person on camera — and that’s always the judge.
EMERSON: We did those courtroom scenes in chronological order too, so as the audience gets to know the characters and those relationships, we were getting to know them at the same time.
Carrie Preston as Elsbeth Tascioni and Michael Emerson as Judge Milton Crawford on “Elsbeth.” CBS Tell me about the scene in chambers — when it’s now just the two of you. EMERSON: It’s one of those kind of scenes that I like best, which is one on one. It’s quiet, but the subtext is very dangerous. A lot of messages are being sent that are off text.
PRESTON: And we played it several different ways, so they could turn the dial up, or they could turn the dial down in the edit, depending on how they wanted the storyline to play out.
EMERSON: We haven’t seen it.
PRESTON: They don’t show me shows until it airs, so I see it with the audience. So I’ll be curious to see. I can’t wait to see how it cuts together. Because it’s one thing to play it in the room — that’s when all possibilities are infinite, and then when we see it on TV, it has become the definitive. I sometimes don’t even want to watch it, because I know what we did, and I know what it could be in my mind. But there were so many different ways that we did it that were equally interesting; we gave them some good choices.
EMERSON: I’ll be curious to see it. I can’t wait to see it!
Michael, what was it like watching Carrie work? EMERSON: I’m a fan of Elsbeth, but when you’re on set, you get to see Elsbeth just before they say “Action,” and just after they say “Cut” again. I get to watch her do that thing, and then go into it and then come back out of it, it.
It makes the acting a little tricky, only because I don’t have a neutral character in front of me. I have the person I woke up with that morning, so I have to spend some mental energy erasing her from my memory and making her be someone I’ve never met before.
What did you observe about her before “Action” and after “Cut”? EMERSON: I observed her relaxation. How it’s just so there for her. It doesn’t require a lot of deep breathing or pinching herself or anything like that. When they say action, she’s full-on Elsbeth right there, seemingly without any effort at all.
Carrie, you’ve played this character for so long — 14 years with “The Good Wife” and then “The Good Fight.” But this is a new iteration of her and a new tempo, being the center of the action. How much have you relished this version of Elsbeth? PRESTON: This moment is not lost on me in my life or in my career. I’ve been doing this for a long time. When you’re younger and you’re first starting out, you think, “Oh, wow, it’d be great to have a show that’s centered around my character,” but there’s never that expectation that that’s going to happen. Because it doesn’t happen to very many people at all. I’ve had an incredibly fortuitous career. I feel blessed with the career that I’ve had, so, the fact that this is coming now, because of all the years that I put into the work, I appreciate it more
I’ve also never worked so hard before — because the hours are challenging. It takes a lot of hours to make this 43 minutes that you’re watching. And when you’re called Elsbeth, you’re there a lot and that can be a little challenging on the stamina. But whenever I find myself lagging in any way energy-wise, I just remind myself that this is an incredibly rare thing. It’s a gift. I just turn to somebody on the set and tell them how great they are. I just try to put that love and joy in what I’m doing and share it with other people so that everyone feels as lucky and as joyful and as appreciated as I feel being trusted with that job.
CBS At the end of this episode, audiences get the idea that Elspeth has figured out that Judge Crawford knows more about this murder he has let on, after he lets it slip that Donna Summer was playing. What comes next? PRESTON: He’s somebody that is not going to be easy to catch because of his reach and his power and his influence. But I don’t think he quite understands the tenacity of Elsbeth Tasioni either. He is only starting to realize that she’s not all that she appears to be.
EMERSON: The judge is going to go to work to try to undermine her in a number of ways. We get little glimpses of him in three more episodes scattered, and then there will be another big episode where they…
PRESTON: Is it three more?
EMERSON: Yeah, I have a total of five.
PRESTON: See, I don’t even know.
EMERSON: She’s on a need-to-know basis.
PRESTON: Listen, I’m one episode at a time.
Do you have any future aspirations of working together or creating something together? Because you had the mother-son relationship on “Lost”… EMERSON: A Freudian nightmare.
PRESTON: Yeah, that’s something when you give birth to your husband in the woods. Not many people can say that they’ve done that.
EMERSON: At least I didn’t have to play that scene.
Now that would have been something! So, we’ve got mother-son in “Lost,” you played a couple in “Person of Interest” and now adversaries in “Elsbeth.” What other type of relationship could you do in the future? PRESTON: Mentor-mentee.
EMERSON: Doctor and patient.
PRESTON: Should he play my father somewhere in a flashback? Turnabout is fair play, right?
EMERSON: I can’t give birth to you, but I could teach you some valuable life lessons around the campfire.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
