In “Elsbeth,” the most delightful network drama in years, Carrie Preston revives her Emmy-winning character from “The Good Wife,” a bubbly attorney who is not nearly as ditsy as she first appears. But long before the procedural, airing 9 p.m Thursdays on CBS, Preston was a theater actor who made a memorable stop in Minneapolis.
In a Zoom interview Wednesday from New York, Preston, 56, chatted about that experience and her journey to the top.
Q: What do you remember about the 2001 production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” at the Guthrie Theater with Patrick Stewart and Mercedes Ruehl?
A: It was amazing. I worked with Patrick on “The Tempest,” for Shakespeare in the Park, then we moved it to Broadway. So I made my Broadway debut while Sir Patrick was making his Broadway debut. He and I hit it off so well. So some years later, when they were casting the role of Honey, he put in a good word. When I was an undergrad at University of Evansville in southern Indiana, we thought that if you ever got to be in a show at the Guthrie, you had made it. That was our Broadway.
Q: You’ve been playing Elsbeth for about 15 years. What were your initial thoughts about her?
A: I knew the minute I read the script that it was something extraordinary. The character just jumped off the page. The fact they were trusting me with it made me nervous because the writing was so wonderful. They described her as a female Columbo. I hadn’t really watched a lot of “Columbo,” but I kind of understood what they meant. She approaches things in an unconventional way.
Q: The spin-off leans even more into “Columbo.” Did you revisit it?
A: I did go back and watch some of those terrific episodes to get some inspiration. But our show is definitely more of a comedy. It’s basically a circus in the middle of “Law & Order.”
