ELSBETH: Carrie Preston Previews Elsbeth ‘Thrown Off of Her Game’ in the Season 1 Finale

When Elsbeth (Carrie Preston) came to New York in the ELSBETH pilot, Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce) knew she was there for the consent decree—to watch over NYPD investigations to make sure they were following the law—and the lawyer helped solve a handful of cases with her keen intuition and hunches.

But it took a beat for Wagner to realize she was also investigating him. And though the duo were eventually able to work together (and prove he had been set up by a longtime friend/fellow cop), Wagner was hurt and effectively terminated Elsbeth’s association with his unit in the penultimate episode of season 1.

“Well, she has had the rug pulled out from under her, completely, at the end of episode 9,” Preston tells Give Me My Remote. “She really thought that it was going to be okay; that [Wagner]  was going to be able to get through this without getting in trouble himself and she was feeling good about that. And then he sends her back to Chicago. So it’s a real gut punch to her.”

“And I really enjoy playing those scenes, as painful as they were for the characters,” she continues. “They were really juicy things to play with Wendell, who’s such an incredible actor.”

Elsbeth is still reeling in the season finale (airing Thursday, May 23, at a special 9/8c time slot), struggling with her upcoming banishment from her new home. “It was interesting to see what happens when Elsbeth gets thrown off of her game, because she’s just so usually on top of things,” Preston previews. “But I think that made it interesting to see a character maybe not know what she’s going to do or how she’s going to solve a thing. And it makes her human and vulnerable in a way that we haven’t seen her before.”

The lawyer is also out of her element as the team investigates a fashion show murder and the team has to contend with designers, photographers, and supermodels.

“When she first shows up at the crime scene, there are these six-, seven-foot models who are wearing three-foot shoes, practically, that are just towering over her, which is such a fun metaphor for how she feels in that world,” Preston notes. “Definitely a fish out of water. But there’s a murder and she can’t quite figure out who did it. And usually those are things that, as you’ve seen in the first season, come to her pretty quickly. She has a hunch, almost like a Spidey sense, about who it is that committed the murder.”

“That was difficult for her,” she continues. “It always makes it interesting for a character to be thrown off their game. Conflict is what makes good television. We had that in a beautiful way in the finale.”

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