Carrie Preston lives to get a laugh out of the man who helped create the role of her life. So when Robert King was directing the pilot for CBS’ “Elsbeth,” the long-overdue spinoff putting Preston’s Emmy-winning, idiosyncratic “The Good Wife” lawyer, Elsbeth Tascioni, front and center as a brilliant, bedeviling murder sleuth, he wanted a crime-scene entrance befitting an eccentric. King set up a shot of a sidewalk, dramatically thick with uniformed officers, and Preston poked her head into frame with the timing of a silent film comedian.
King’s cackling commenced. “Victory for the day!” recalls Preston, who has coined a name for the fast-forming arsenal of kookiness that includes the character’s now-trademark pop-up arrival: “I call them ‘Els-bits.’” Elsbeth came into our lives early in the run of “The Good Wife.
” What do you recall of her origins? When I got offered the role, Robert said, “We’re thinking about her like a female Columbo.” I knew what he meant, that she would go about things in an unconventional way and people would underestimate her. In that first script, they wrote the word “pause” in parentheses.
And I thought, “I’m really interested in what’s going on in that pause. I’m going to fill that in and see if it’s something they find interesting.” So I started digging and figured, maybe she’s thinking one thing, saying another, and her body’s doing a third thing.
It starts to feel like great musical comedy,.
