‘Elsbeth’: Carrie Preston Previews Shakeup at Precinct & Teddy’s Wedding

“Today I climbed out of an isolation tank where I was floating in saltwater in a very fetching outfit,” Carrie Preston tells TV Insider from the set of Elsbeth, where she’s shooting her fourth season as the titular quirky and brilliant sleuth, who’s always impeccably eccentrically dressed as she lends a hand to the NYPD.

It’s just one of the slippery situations coming up for Ms. Elsbeth Tascioni. Preston shares that the second episode was particularly fun to shoot because it concerns Elsbeth solving a murder in the playwriting world. “It’s a love letter to Arthur Miller. I think we’re probably the only show network or streaming that’s going to have Arthur Miller jokes,” Preston says with a laugh.

There definitely will be the death of a someone with this setup: Guest lead Nicholas Braun (Succession) plays a young man who’s spent his life in the shadow of his aging famous playwright father (John Doman, The Wire) whose lifelong best friend and producer (Richard Thomas, The Waltons) keeps his secrets while dealing with hungry up-and-comers. The hour also has a twist on the series’ usual structure. Typically, the audience sees the killer at the top of the episode and watches Elsbeth figure it out. This time, viewers discover the guilty party along with Elsbeth.

The installment features NYC theater journalist Frank DiLella playing himself, along with more NYC marquee names. (TV Insider has the rundown of the season’s guest stars that have been announced so far here.) “I love it when we have theater actors come on,” Preston says. “No one can embrace the level of scene work that our show requires better. We’re doing six-page scenes that are very dense, full of dialogue — things that you have to make sing. Theater actors do it the best.”

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Preston also previews some fun she had in an episode that sees an unpopular country club member (Nat Faxon, Loot) sink a miraculous hole-in-one that leads to murder. “I’m going to be swinging a golf club. I love it when they give me physical things to do,” Preston says. “That’s my favorite. Everybody knows I walk onto a set and immediately start looking for which of the props I can hold or do something insane with. We just had an [another] episode where I do something quite interesting with an amethyst crystal.”

That crystal is known for easing stress. Maybe get one just for good measure for Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce), who’s in charge of the precinct where Elsbeth works. “There’s going to be a little bit of a shakeup in the precinct,” Preston teases. “It doesn’t necessarily involve Elsbeth, but it will reverberate throughout the whole precinct.”

Off the clock, the sleuth’s planning her son Teddy’s (Ben Levi Ross) wedding. He proposed to his boyfriend Roy (Hayward Leach) in the finale of the third season. “Elsbeth is probably the happiest mother of the grooms-to-be. She is thrilled to be starting the planning of Teddy and Roy’s wedding,” Preston says. “I’m sure she’s going to be a little bit more involved than Teddy would want, but she can’t help it. She gets so excited about any kind of affirmational ceremony, especially one to do with love and with her son who she treasures. But with that will come the arrival of some family members.”

Enter Elsbeth’s mom from Peoria, Illinois. “Elsbeth is unique in her family. You feel the Midwest vibes she was raised in,” Preston says. “Your mother showing up can throw you off your game. It’s going to be really fun to show yet another side of this character that we’ve been getting to know all of these years. We’ve seen Elsbeth as a mother. We’ve seen her as obviously a coworker. We’ve seen her as a best friend. We’ve seen her as a girlfriend, but we haven’t quite seen her as a daughter.”

We haven’t seen her as a wife, because she’s happily divorced. It wouldn’t be out of this world to see her ex, played by Will Patton, show up at the nuptials. “We found out in The Good Wife [the legal drama in which Elsbeth’s character first appeared] that she and her ex are pretty estranged,” Preston says. “Nonetheless, it is their son and he’s getting married. I’m not sure how Jonathan Tolins, our brilliant showrunner, is going to handle that but it would be really fun. I’m sure Gonzo’s [Elsbeth’s dog] going to be in the wedding, too.”

Michael Parmelee/CBS

And let’s talk about the wedding dress code. Preston doesn’t hesitate to describe her character’s dream mother-of-the-groom gown: “[It would be] an explosion of flowers and rainbows and sparkles and every color under the sky. She’s so celebratory of love and life. She’s going to want her clothes to reflect that. However, she does want to defer to Teddy, and he’s a little more understated. So, her dream outfit might not be exactly what she’s going to end up wearing. She does want to be a good girl and yield the stage to her son and her son’s fiancé.”

There is one change in her costume this year that Preston can solidly confirm: “Elsbeth gets to wear colorful sneakers. I’m very excited about that because usually I was wearing flats. It makes my life wonderful! [And this is] my favorite season premiere entrance so far. I will be arriving in a New York City pedicab. They went all out with the decorating!”

Preston says that on set, the vibe is just as happy and joyful as one of those faux-fur lined, Disco ball-decorated, K-pop-blasting tuk-tuks: “It’s a miracle to have a fourth season of any show. So everybody — especially in this climate where the industry has been shrinking and there just aren’t as many things being made — we’re all just so grateful to be working and working on something that we all love.”

Elsbeth, Season 4 Premiere, Thursday, October 8, 9/8c, CBS