I'm Jane Pauley. You're listening to an extended interview from the latest edition of Sunday Morning. Kerry, would you mind stating your name in full, spelling it, yes, and giving your title.
Okay, Carrie Preston, C A R R I E P R E S T O N. My title is human being, who happens to be an actor. A human being who happens to be an actor is a perfect way to begin this because I did a bit on this show last season, and the night before I was shooting, I got a text from you saying, "Hey Mo, it's Carrie. Excited to see that you're joining us on the show." Now this isn't typical that the star of the show writes an actor, and I'm not putting myself down, but somebody playing a smaller part on the show in a scene that you weren't even in. Yeah.
So what was that about? I I loved it. Oh, I'm glad. I'm glad you loved it. Yeah.
I um I make it part of my mission in this role as you know the head of the acting department. How I look at it. To make sure that the actors that are coming on the show feel welcome, I myself have been doing this a long time. I've done a lot of you know supporting roles, I've done a lot of small roles like you were just saying in my career, and have walked onto sets sometimes, and you know am not really spoken to, and then you feel you know. Isolated, you feel it makes you more scared, intimidated.
Sure, you're intimidated. You feel like you, I'm not going to be able to do my work. But if you have a warm greeting from somebody, then you can relax and do your work. And it's an easy thing to do, and it makes everybody feel like they're part of a big picture and they're creating something. In your outlook, you said it comes.
Largely from your mother. Where does it come from? Yeah, I would say definitely my mother. She, you know, is an extraordinary person. She herself is a visual artist, and she did art therapy with people.
So she would use art to. She called it expressive art to help them, you know, deal with any kind of. Problems they might be having, whether it be some kind of a mental problem or just a bump they're having in the road, and she would use visual art for that. And so, I guess I have a real appreciation for the power of what art can do, storytelling can do. It's a sacred thing, you know, in our household, and was from the beginning.
My brother's an actor as well. My sister is. She's a what I like to call a cool librarian. She works at Fashion Institute of Technology in their library, so she's you know working again in in the arts. And so I don't know.
I just feel like all of those things, in my opinion, art has the power to heal and to change. People's minds and to impact the world, you know, even if it's a lighthearted murder mystery like I'm doing, it's bringing joy to people. Bringing joy. This is what they're telling me anyway. Right, a murder mystery that brings joy.
Isn't that funny? I know. Who knew? Who knew? Well, it is.
It is in the tradition of some age-old things like Columbo, Murder She Wrote. You know, things where it's a little bit of a more lighthearted take on. Probably because you know who the murderer is at the beginning. There's no stress; you're not trying to. Oh my God, who did it?
You already know, and then you're just watching Elsbeth and her cohorts figure it out. And there's a term for that. Yeah, it's a how done it, right?
Okay, as opposed to a who done it. Did you grow up watching Columbo when Robert King first called? And they offered me the role of Elsbeth way back on *The Good Wife*. He said, "We're thinking about her as a female Columbo," and didn't know the show enough to know the details of that. But I understood what he meant, which was that he doesn't want the people in the room with her to see that she is brighter than everyone.
And you know, Columbo, he wore the rumpled. Trench coat underestimated, underestimated, and nobody knew that he was as smart as he was, and that was by design. And so, I think it's really wonderful that now, all these years later, they created a show that is based on that same structure. He had it in his brain seventeen years ago, and here we are. You mentioned your siblings and your mother.
Your father, not an artist, no, but he he was a really interesting person. He's passed away now, but he was a geotechnical engineer, very, very brilliant, very left brain. But he also loved astrology, and he used to do charts by hand. He would do astrological charts, so he had a sense of. The metaphysical, or you know, something else outside of us.
Where are we? We're in Elsbeth's apartment. Yes, this is a this is Elsbeth's place. Elsbeth is not afraid of color, and all of her trinkets and stuff that are brought in by our incredible production design team or our direction team. Every time I come to my set.
In my apartment, I see something new. They even keep it fresh in here because, like you do in your in your home, things move around and stuff like that. Nothing's ever quite the same. There'll be a different dog leash. There'll be a different tote bag hanging somewhere, and just that level of detail speaks to how incredible the people around me are.
And the this apartment is a set, but it's based on an actual apartment that we shot in, and so.
So, if there is one line from the series that sums up your character, what would it be? Oh gosh, you know how many lines I have to learn. I'm memorizing about fifty pages of dialogue every. Eight to ten days.
Well, let me nominate. I can't edit that. Yeah, give me some. The final line of season three of the last season. Oh yes, isn't it great to love things?
Yeah, that is true. And and Jonathan Tolins, our showrunner, wrote that. And it it is true. It is true. Isn't it?
Isn't it a wonderful thing? Why is that line so perfect for Alicebeth? Because I feel like. To have that sense of wonder and curiosity at any age, but especially if you've been on the planet for a while, it takes discipline. It's a choice.
It's a choice to do that, and to love things, to love things, and to appreciate things, and to see that glass half full. You know, we we have a tendency, I think, as as people, it's easier in some ways to suffer. It's easier to find what's wrong with a thing and concentrate on that. It's a it's a default. It's a fall.
It's a default. I mean, it's kind of the human nature, right, to do that. And so, it takes a lot of discipline to choose not to do that. And that's what Elspeth does every day. And that's Probably why she's so good at her job and solving crimes because she's tenacious and she's not gonna let it go.
She's gonna make it happen, but she's also seeing the person and coming at them with compassion, which is an interesting thing for, you know.
Somebody who's trying to put a murderer away. Isn't it great to love things? Do you share that mantra with Elsbeth? I think she's infectious, and and and I do find that to be infectious. And when I do find myself, I'm complaining about something or feeling something, I do remember that I am representing.
An extremely positive person, and in this show, and I let her wash over me. I look at New York City now in a different way because I've lived here for a long time, and Elsbeth has just moved here, you know, at the beginning of the season and or the series, and she loves it, and she just sees nothing but the beauty of New York. Describe Elsbeth. Elsbeth is a brilliant, quirky, unorthodox, unconventional woman who has learned to accept who she is and use all of her. An intellect, and her joy, and her empathy, and her curiosity, as a little secret superpower, in her work.
She's smart. Very smart. Is she naive? No, I don't think she's naive. Because she could be mistaken for naive.
She's mistaken for naive, and she knows that, but she doesn't want to change who she is. Wonder and naive. There's a very Close connection. I would say she leans in the the wonder department because she's curious, and it's that curiosity then that gets her to find that one little detail that is going to be the thing that solves the case. And which is harder to see that one little detail if you're jaded or cynical, exactly.
If you're negative and you're never going to. You're never gonna be able to see that, you know. Because you know what's there already. Yeah, exactly. You know what's there, or whatever.
And you know, she has a lot of information. I like to think she has like this incredible rolodex in her mind, and she never knows when she's gonna need to go rifle through it and find something. Is that what's in those tote bags? Yes, just a bunch of rolodexes. Just rolodexes.
No, I like to think that she loads her tote bags with whatever it is that she thinks she needs that day to help her unlock something in her brain, and it could be that it's you know a calculator, but it also could be you know rubber squeaky toy from her dog, or you know one of these you know pigs or something that she puts coins in, something that she knows might somehow she's going on instinct. I think trigger. A clue. We'll have more from our Sunday morning extended interview after this break. What keeps the character from turning into a kook?
That's that's an interesting question. I mean, I always try to make sure that the character is grounded. In truth, even though it's a comedy and it's elevated, and there is a lot of police procedural kind of language that you have to make sound like a real person talking, I really rely on my. My training, you know, I I really do use it. You know, I'm I'm a big believer in actor training, even if you do it on you know on the job.
But the formal training that I had, I I loved, and I I really use that to make sure that all of the, you know the the the the there's a specificity to what I'm doing, and I think specificity is what keeps things from being. General, the costumes are more than just colorful and eye-catching. Yes, right, they're really part of the story here. They are definitely part of the storytelling. And Elsbeth, I like to think, dresses for herself.
She dresses because she wants to feel good when when she puts these clothes on. But she also knows how they're being received. And Dan Lawson is a genius costume designer, and he knows when to layer in something that's a little more distracting, because it's a scene about distracting the killer, so that they will drop their guard. And say something that will incriminate them.
So she wears the clothes that she likes wearing, but she's also aware that they disarm people who may need disarming. Yes, yes. I think it's it's a strategy. It's a strategy, and it's you know it's also something that she. She is not going to abuse.
It's not a Machiavellian thing. It's not something that she's twirling her, you know, mustache and saying, "I'm gonna catch the killer," but she'll sometimes act like she doesn't know something when she does. To disarm somebody, so she doesn't intimidate them.
So it's all a means to an end, and I think the clothes are part of that too. Yeah, let's talk about the king of creepy. How did you meet Michael, the king of creepy? Who is the nicest man that ever lived? Anyone who's ever met him is like, he plays these heinous characters, and he is so kind.
We met at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in nineteen ninety four, and we were doing a production of Hamlet down there. My brother was playing Horatio. I got cast as Ophelia, and Michael was, his words, the oldest living graduate student.
So he was, he was. It was his second career. Who was he playing? He was playing Guildenstern.
So we we really mind the lost corteo for the deep relationship between Ophelia and Guildenstern. There is no such thing, but we. I just thought he was extraordinary. I saw him. They were doing.
It was a rep company, so they were doing Christmas Carol of all shows, and I went to see a student matinee of Christmas Carol because my brother was in it, and then there was this guy. And he played like six different parts, and you know, every time he came on stage, he had some accent or his teeth were blacked out, and then he would come back and he would have a top hat and he would do something completely different. And I was like, who is this guy? Who is this guy?
So I totally fell for him before I even met him. Yeah, and this is such a busy period for you. Yeah.
So how was that? Affected the dynamic. He's holding down the fort, or yeah, yeah. Michael is great at holding down the fort, and you know he's been in my position. He's he's done long running series, and he knows the hours and he knows what it takes.
So there's an understanding there, which I really appreciate. You know, he knows what I have to. Do to make this job work, and he loves being a support. I feel very lucky, and he's enjoying taking some time just to do that. And he does a job now and again, but he knows I don't want to.
You know, he knows he doesn't want to take on a big, another big series because it would we would just never see each other. You know, what is it like doing scenes together? It was really fun when he came on Elsbeth. Yeah, because Michael and I have a different way of working. We're both.
We both. We both. I should say we have similar ways and different ways. Similarly, we like to prepare on our own.
So I don't work with anyone on my lines. I do it all with myself. I record my own cue lines. I listen to my own cue lines. We don't run lines with each other, which probably the audience is imagining.
We don't do any of that. I do all my prep work alone. He does all of his prep work alone, and then we show up on set. And what was great about him is I didn't need to worry about what he was. Gonna bring because I knew it was gonna be great.
I just had to rise to it, you know, and we like that idea of surprising each other with something in the moment because I mean that's what you want, right? You want to create an authentic moment with someone else. And hope the camera catches it.
Well, it's it's interesting because you know you hear every look. People make different choices for different reasons, but you hear actors sometimes say, "Oh, I needed to be with somebody who's not in the business." But you love being with another actor, yeah. A lot of people do that, but I um, I've just always, well, he he and I've been together so long now. But even before him, I I dated actors. You know, I just like having that common.
Thing that we love, and the funny thing is that Michael and I don't even really talk about it that much at home. You know, we don't even really talk about the business much or the craft of acting.
Well, like if I have an audition, I don't even like for him to read with me. I just like to keep it separate, and. I think our jobs is our our jobs for each other, or to is to support each other. That's our job. Support him.
I'll tell him, he's great. If he wants feedback, he can ask for it. But I'm never going to offer it. Same with him to me. You know, and and I think that makes for a really wonderful, respectful way to work.
Who comes to mind when you think of people? That has just been really great to you. Gosh, you know, I feel like we're getting them all on Elsbeth. It's incredible. I mean, the guest stars on this show are mind blowing.
My best friend, who is actually here with us right now, and she is my assistant. Every time somebody comes up that we worshipped when we were younger, we scream and jump up and down like little girls. We're so excited. We send each other emojis of like, "Are you dying, Dad? Cannot believe this.
This is insane." Diane Weist, being you know one Steve Buscemi, Mary Louise Parker. I mean, just people that I admired, you know, so much growing up or alongside. I mean. I just couldn't believe. I just can't believe they they're going to come and hang out with us, and so I think that's also one of the wonderful things about our show, and it does echo what Columbo did, you know, bring on the the great, you know, actors of the day.
They get to come in for eight nine days, and do a really cool part that maybe is different from something they've done before, and then they can go back to their busy careers.
So I feel like you know, Steve Buscemi asked to be on the show. That blows my mind. He's great, and he's so fantastic. Blows my mind. Who's on your wish list?
I mean, Meryl Streep. She's just because I've been, you know, worshipped her my whole life, and she she she does some television, you know. But you know, so I don't know things like that. I I like to dream about that. Why not?
Sally Field, bring her on. I would love that. You know what I'm saying? These people, these women that I've looked up to. And then we, you know, get to have so many of these people, and we get to have people that I wouldn't have even dared to think about, you know.
And then there they are, standing there in front of me. You have your own mantra, is that right? Yeah, I do. I say this is a miracle, especially if I find myself getting hijacked by some frustration or you know some emotion that's maybe getting in the way of me. Feeling joy, and I'll say, this is a miracle.
This is a miracle. This is a miracle. And then I also think about the little Carrie Preston who grew up in Macon, Georgia, who started doing plays when she was ten years old. You know, because her brother was doing plays, and she wanted to be like her brother. And I think about that little girl and what her dreams were.
I mean, when I was like six years old, I used to pretend that there were cameras in the trees, and I would try to act natural, which is just like what. Where did I get that? But I have a distinct memory of doing that out in the front yard. Don't look into the camera. Don't look at the trees because there's cameras there.
So you have to just keep playing and doing your being on your swing set or whatever, but acting natural.
Now that the irony is that I would hardly say my acting style is natural, but it's grounded. But I prophesied somehow, you know, that that this was coming for me, and I dreamed about it, and so I don't want to. I don't want to take that for granted. This moment is not lost on me. I'm Jane Pauley.
Thank you for listening. And for more of our extended interviews, follow and listen to Sunday Morning on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to a quick ad. You know what else is quick? Selling your car on Carvana.
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