You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl. Hi. Everyone, welcome to I Choose Me. This podcast is all about the bold and sometimes quirky choices we make. From her Emmy Award winning turn as the brilliant and unconventional Elsbeth Tascone on the Good Wife and the Good Fight to leading CBS's hit series Elsbeth, Carrie Preston has turned her
quirk into clarity and curiosity into power. Endlessly versatile, Carrie has moved seamlessly between comedy and drama, television and film stage, and directing from Elsbeth to True Blood and Clause to The Holdovers. She has built a career defined not by chasing trends, but by choosing roles that feel surprising and emphasize individuality. That instinct continued to pay off this year, earning her a Critics Choice Best Actress in a Comedy
Series nomination. Offscreen, Carrie brings that same intentionality to how she lives, Supporting all kinds of human rights, enjoying a long and loving marriage with fellow actor Michael Emerson, and in an industry that can reward bitter competition, Carrie quietly has built a reputation for being gracious and kind. She doesn't just play characters who choose themselves and others. She lives it. So happy to have Carrie Preston with me today.
There's something I think that's really great about you is that you and your husband, Michael Emerson have been together for a good minute.
Yeah.
You both share life and creative work together. And I'm sure over the is it twenty six years now?
Yeah, we've been married twenty seven. Yeah, we've been together for thirty one.
Wow, whoa wow, Hello, I'm praying, I'm bounce to you.
I'm losing count, you know, I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute. What is it? Sort of like when sometimes when people ask me what aide, how old are you? I'm like, I think you know, it's it's like that with with the with the marriage for sure, just you know, well, first of all, time is flying by, and then second of all he's just been such a steady that I I don't need you.
Know, Yes, I'm sure over the over all the years, you've seen all the ups and downs of the life of not just one actor, but two. Yes, being married to another actor I means sharing a very uncertain industry, one that comes with a lot of all the things, rejection, stress, absurd schedules, not aligning, having to be in the public eye so much of the time. How do you and your husband choose to protect your marriage?
Yeah, we are, you know, we're like that boring married couple, you know, And I'm saying we we like we we we stay home when we can, we next together. Well, we have you know, similar interests. We it's all those things that you like learned in kindergarten, you know. We we respect each other. We we say please, we say
thank you, We know how to share. You know. It's just those things that help, you know, keep the marriage going and keep and keep it protected because there is that respect for each other, and there's that joy, and there's that understanding of what the other one is doing, you know, supporting each other in choices. Oh, I want to go and do a series. It's going to shoot in another city for we don't know how long. Right, how are we going to navigate the time of part?
We have like little rules, you know. We talk every day. We're old school. We talk on the phone.
Don't really be a telephone, you actually talk into it.
We talked into it like this. Wow, I know, it's weird. We don't do the FaceTime. Well, I don't know, it's just that's how we started. And so that's what feels comfortable to us, is just the miihoring of the voice. And we if we're apart, we try to see each other at least every two weeks, you know. It's like we rule and even if it's for a day, we see each other. And somehow that seems do you have worked?
Yeah, I mean it's crazy because I'm sure both of you are just moving a million miles an hour in different directions a lot of the times. Yeah, but that staying connected is so important.
It is, it is, and you know, it's it's interesting this time, at this time in my life, I'm I'm the super busy one, and he's the one that's kind of enjoying not being busy, right, And that's has been a wonderful balance for us because he is really great at domestic things, like he takes care of the home and our lives. And you know, he just brought me lunch to make sure I was eating, you know, like he's because he knows I'm I'm busy doing things for the show and and and I like that he understands
the weird hours. He understands when you know, I have to get up at four am and I, you know, I have to go to bed at a certain hour, or I'm always having lines or whatever it is. And I think it helps that we both, you know, have been in the same perfection and you know, we get what those weird demands are. And then when we neither one of us is working, we really take advantage of that time together. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm so glad it's working out for you being married to an actor, because yeah, it was a little challenging for me, but that's okay. I'm happy for you.
Well, we don't really talk about the industry much.
Oh that's a good idea.
And that's good idea. And you know, we watch each other's work and just go amazing and then that's it. You know. He we worked together. He came on Elsbeth last season. He did ARC and it was funny because they they you know, everybody loves Michael. He's brilliant. Yes, yes, oh, let's figure out how to keep him on longer. And
Michael was like, I'm good. I like, I just want to be in this amount, and then I want to give the show back to Carrie and let her just that's her show, and you know, and I want her to I don't want to be a part, you know. I only want to be a part of it to a certain degree. And that was very healthy for us. I think I love that.
Yeah, you've played so many unconventional women who succeed by kind of leaning into what makes them different. Yeah. What what such interesting choices? What was there a moment in your own real life or even in your career when you consciously chose yourself over fitting into the mold.
I feel like all the time. You know, I had an amazing I have an amazing mother, and I had a very supportive childhood in encouraging me to be who I am and to find whatever passion it is that I want out of life. My mom's was a visual artist and art therapist and so very supportive of letting each of her kids be individual and who we are. And so I feel like it was kind of inherent
in me from the get go to do that. And when I fell in love with theater, I fell in love with acting, there was never trying to talk me out of it. You know, and even when I was a kid and starting to do plays, when I was like nine years old, I was wanted to play the strange characters, the weird characters, the character characters I wanted to play. You know, I didn't want to play Cinderella or snow White. I wanted to play the ditsy maid
or the kookie fairy godmother. You know, I wanted those parts. And I don't know why. I mean, I don't know what.
It was like, they seem more fun, they.
Were more fun, and they got to do more interesting things and so and I feel like I, you know, was able to bring my own unique brand, even though you know, people like when I was in college and even when I first got out in the industry, it was like, oh, you're an angenue, you should don't play the I was like, no, I don't want to do ingenue. You know, I don't want to. I want to do the you know, that's not who I feel like I am on the inside.
You know, it doesn't match up, doesn't match up. So good to know that about yourself at such an age too.
Yeah, But the industry, you know, when when I was certainly launched into it, I went to school for a really long time. I really liked it.
You went to Juilliard, but I went to before that.
I went to college, so I was you know, I was in school for like a solid eight years and and and loved that. I liked the you know, the kind of insular womb that it was, you know. And then when I got catapuled it out into the industry in the nineties, you know, it was very much about what's on the outside. Oh yes, you know, as you know, and I was just I just couldn't I just couldn't quite just couldn't quite keep up with that, you know. It was just like I just like didn't know how
to do that. So I, you know, just kept leaning into you know, playing these fun supporting roles and a lot of them ended up being comedic. And I found that, you know, I that was something that I could offer, and it would be the less pressure on on on all whatever the requirements that you be on.
The y the standards.
So what I would have hold on to that when you say choose me, I would choose that, you know, say, no, I'm leaning into this, I'm choosing this right I want to. That's what I feel like. I have to offer, you know, yeah, you know, I don't. I don't really like the term character actor because like, we're all characters. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, Like Joy Roberts is playing a character.
But you know that word I like to I like to call us more like illusionists, you know, people who are really illusionists, yeah, who want to create an illusion, but being somebody different than them.
It sounds like you just always really stayed true to your authenticity. And that's so admirable. Like even when the industry wanted to change it, get rid of it, make you do what everybody else was doing.
It's painful. It's painful, you know. I remember one time I gotten you know, I was a theater girl, right, So I was doing all this theater and I had been in theater school and stuff, and I didn't know what style. I didn't know about styling, I didn't know about stylists, I didn't know about any of that stuff, and so I would just sort of dress the way I want to dress. And I had just gotten some new clothes and I thought they were really cute, and you know, I did my makeup and my hair in
the way that I thought I looked pretty. And I went into an audition and you know that, I got a call from my agent, well, we have some feedback for you, okay, And I was like, oh that I hold the feedback. Yeah, I hate the feedback, you know. I was like, you were great, you were like one of the best actors. But they said you need to start paying more attention to how you look, and okay, I just I was like, what does that mean? Like, I don't even know what to I don't even know
how to do. And I said to my agent, I don't know, I don't know what to do with that, and she was like, well, you know, maybe you should get a stylist. And I was like, I can't afford a stylist, you know. I couldn't afford to get somebody who could do that. So I just had to like live with that and then think, okay, well what does that mean in terms of business. I guess it means, I, you know, I need to I don't know, change my hair color and do a little I don't know, do some stuff.
I noticed myself up a little.
Pitted myself up, and so I did that, and you know, it's it's sort of worked. But I just love it that now I'm playing this woman who ELL's Betasi, who dresses the way she wants to dress out. Now it's fabulous, but it's not like anybody else is dressing.
Oh it's so good.
You know, doesn't know how to do her hair and make up really, you know, she just does what she can with her life. I just love that from that point, you know, that moment in my real life that it's now lining up with I'm playing a character that was doing the same thing that I was. That's so cool doing them.
You know, it's like full circle for you, full.
Circle fifteen years though of.
The same character Elisabeth. Oh, the course of three different shows. Am I right on that?
You are right? Yes, What is.
The secret to this role's longevity?
I don't know. I mean, well, in the Good Wife and Good Fight, you know, she was just recurring, like I would maybe play her once a year, if that. I think I played her over the those two shows maybe twenty times, nineteen twenty times over there, you know, And that was fourteen years of you know their shows, right right, seven seasons and another seven or six or seven seasons.
So it's something about her.
And then just something about her. I think she just has She's a very unique person. Her perspective on life is unique. She's very positive, she's very present, she's very curious. It brings a lot of energy and joy to her life. I think it's a choice. I think she talk about choose. She uses that. It's it is a decisive thing. It is something that you have to work at to be
that way in the world. You know. I think our tendency is to, you know, not be that, because why you know, you you're opening yourself up more to being hurt, to be judged, to be all those things. And this is a woman who chooses, uh not to do that. And I think that's infectious, and I think people it's infectious for me to play her, but I think it's also hopefully what brings people back to want to watch
her again. You know. Yes, yes, she makes things about not herself, about she makes it about the other person, about the problem, about the puzzle, about the mystery, about the law, the legal case she's working on. It's always about other things, which I think is it's kind of a subversive way of choosing herself.
Right, right, Yeah, Her quirkiness is so fun because it's never explained or apologize for no really is yeah, right? And I think that it sounds like it was helpful for you to kind of be in that unconventional sort of state of mind. But do you think it's it's helpful for the viewers too. It's something that they're noticing. It's not something when you're unconventional, it's not something that you need to hide from, but it's something that you should protect and even highlight.
Yeah, I think so. I think I think it's true. And and but she's so singular, she's so unique, and people like to ask me, you know, what does she have? What is what is she on the spectrum? It's like what's going on? They want to diagnose her and I and we don't want to do that.
You know, what do you say to her that while I.
Say we don't we she is who she is, She is herself. She's not one thing. She's not a diagnosis. And plus, you know, if you were to diagnose, you know, you were to put like a diagnosis on somebody, then it opens it up to oh, well, well that's not really true, that's not that, that's not that thing, that's not that thing. And instead I think it's it's more. I think it's better in a way with this character to let her be who she is as a statement
to let anybody be who they are. And you know, what's so great about her is that people don't see her coming, you know. And so when she's trying to, you know, have a cat and mouse, she has a cat and mouse with this with a killer, and she's trying to get them to slip up and say a thing they're going to because they are they don't know what she's going to say next or do next. Throws
them off their game. It's unexpected, and I think hopefully that's what keeps the viewer watching too, is that they aren't expecting, right, And.
It's got to be a great way for you to stay you know, like fresh and motivated, because you do never know what's going to come up, what's going to.
Be right, Yes, it does, and you know, it's the most material I've ever been trusted with for in such a short amount of time, for twenty episodes. So it's I'm constantly my brain is constantly being engaged. I'm learning fifty page of dialogue every eight days. I'm submerged, I'm immersed in the world of this character and the world
of our set. And I love it. I mean, it's a it's a wonderful creative gift, you know, able to do that, and to be to be trusted with that amount of material, and to be working with people who are giving me such wonderful scripts to work with, you know, It's it's like a once in a lifetime kind of experience I'm having.
It's it's so great. Okay, So do you carry a tote?
Do you? Okay, So I'm gonna show you. Actually I got I.
Want to know what is in Carrie's tote as opposed to what would be an Els tote.
So this is a tote bag that actually I work with a tote bag designer on.
Oh my gosh, that's so fun.
I know. I call it the carry it all the A R I E. They carry it all? Cute? I do I carry it all? I mean, this bag goes with me everywhere, and I've got everything that I need in it in the same way that Elsbeth does. You know, Okay, I carry my day's worth of gosh. I have everything in here, from hand sanitizer to and if I start to get a cold, I have like dual defense I've got like things, rollers, rollers, I got you know, get everything.
Yeah, like me, Like, I don't want to leave the house because without all my things, because what I might need something.
I mean, if I had had kids, I don't know what I would have. I mean I would have probably had to have a whole nother you know, stroller or something just to carry all the stuff.
I was much more organized when I had the kids, like you know, their diaper bag or their whatever bag. But now it's like the bigger the bag, the more stuff I throw in it, and I have no idea what's even in there anymore.
Well, see, this bag has lots of pockets, so I do know where everything is. I like the I am a pretty organized person. So that's why I like it, because it has lots of bad places for all them.
Oh my gosh, that's a cute bag. So where if somebody wanted to buy that is?
Yeah?
For sale?
It is Oh yeah, actually you can go to Yobi mam Okay yob I Mocho Yobi and they have it's called the Carry It All.
Uh so good. Yeah you did a low collab. I did really fun.
Yeah.
What has playing such a fashionable and colorfully styled gal done for your own fashion sense, has her style sort of bled across into your real life.
I like to think that we kind of meet in the middle, you know, because I always have been somebody who is not afraid. So I always wore lots of color. I mean when I hid, my mom used to call it humor dressing. She was like, oh, you're humor dressing again, because I would wear like back, you know, some big baggy parachute pant or something, and I'd wear some oversized, you know, multicolored sweatshirt or and when I was really little, I love to wear long dresses. I just wanted long dresses.
I thought it was just it was it was fun.
To to twirl around. Yeah.
Yeah, even though no one else is everybody's wearing shorts and long down I just loved it. So, you know, I always had that tendency to want to have something that's you know, this is fun chitahs, you know, a little cheetahs on. Yeah, lots to have things that say, say a thing. Then I started playing Elsbeth and the brilliant Dan Lawson, who is our costume designer, who is
you know, it's an extraordinarily talented genius. Uh you know, I just stand there like this and hands me the character and has done that since day one.
I love that when you can just count on somebody that gets it.
He gets it, he understands the character. He'll he sends me, you know, we have these epic fittings at the beginning of the season. I mean like, I'll do a nine hour fitting one day and the next day I'll do like a six hour fitting. And and so he's building up the closet for the season because we do twenty episodes and it's I can't do a fitting every right,
you're busy. So he has got a whole closet and and he he puts all the clothes together on on on, He has a form that's that's uh, got my measurements and he just puts them on. And then he sends me photos and this is what you're wearing. And I never doubt it, you know, I never die. I'm just like, yep, great sounds good. Wow. Am I going to be able to you know, move around in it? Yes? Okay, good, you know, And and then I'll have these like little
you know, spot fittings throughout the season. If there's like the Halloween episode or you know, which he went all out on this year. I wore four different looks from My Fair Lady, Audrey Hepburn's looks from My Fair Lady, and they were all custom built.
Oh my god, that sounds fun.
It was amazing, amazing, you know, from the hats and the whole thing. It was incredible. So you know this, uh, this guy's amazing and and he understands, you know, he understands like that the character needs the character dresses this way because she it makes her feel good. You know, she wants to go out into the world with an an expression of on her body of what's going on inside of her. But she also should be I think,
and she also knows that people underestimate that her. Yeah, right, and so you know, as a superpower.
It's also another thing where they're like, wait, what's happening, what's coming for me right now? I don't know what this is. It's so colorful and very all these choices. It's so good. Okay, so this is your third season, right of Elsbeth.
This is the third season.
Yes, incredible, incredible, everybody check it out. It's out now. So whatever rock we've been living under, get out from under it and check out the show. It's so fun. But you are also producing the show now along with your show creators, which I think is amazing. How has this new title change things for you?
I guess I just, you know, feel like I have a formal voice. I always had a voice. Thankfully, the people that I work with are very collaborative, they're very and they're also very, very good at what they're doing. John Tolan is our showrunner, is excellent, and so I feel lucky that I already have people that are that are able to receive what I say. But it just became a little more formal, as you know, with that
producer producer credit. Yeah, And I mean, you know, when you're an actor and you're on you know, you're playing the title character, and you're on the show as much as I am, in a way, you're already a producer because you are producing what they're writing give the show. You're producing it, you know, like you're standing there doing it the level.
Yeah, So congrats on that. I mean, that just opens up a lot of doors for the future. But you, because you seem like somebody that likes to grow and likes to challenge yourself, you're not just an award winning actress. You're an executive producer like we just mentioned, and you're also a highly sought out director. Yeah, you directed, yes, which is a crazy amount of energy, and I know how hard that is, especially when you're acting and directing
at the same time. But you directed Your Honor with Brian Cranston. Loved that show. I love the look of it. I love the way it was directed and shot. Great job. I'm not sure which, if which episode you did, but it's in general.
That show because I came on in the second season, but the way they do it, it's, uh, you block shoot two episodes simultaneously. So I was directing two episodes at the same time. Oh boy. And so it was really more like directing feature film because it was two hours of television, right and uh but in a you know, shorter amount of time than you get to direct. But uh, the producers on that were very open. They really let
the directors be creative. They weren't prescriptive about these are the only kinds of shots that we do, you know. They were very what's your vision and they helped to to help you bring that to life. And so I felt I had a lot of creative agency with that, which I like, Yeah, it was, and it was probably the most challenging thing I've ever done as a director just because of that. The two and both of the
episodes were different tonally. You know, one of them was very high action pack and the other one was had a little bit more of like, uh, a slower pace, more of a It was kind of the Denument in a way. It was like coming down off of this big high one that I had done. That must have been hard to do.
Like, yeah, it shows it once, so you mean you're like shooting one direction.
Well, you're shooting more like its locations. So like when we would go and this location, we would do all the scenes that were in both episodes in that location, and then we had to go It was set in New Orleans, but we shot in a lot of it in LA in season two, so you know, finding those locations that look like New Orleans in LA you know that kind of thing, and then we would go to New Orleans for a week and shoot everything that we needed to shoot in New Orleans for both episodes at that scene.
Yeah, that takes a lot of mind management, going flopping back and forth totally I.
Know, but I love that. I don't know, I'm kind of I don't know, I'm weird about it, but I guess I really like. It's like a math It's like a huge math problem or something.
Yeah.
I enjoyed that, enjoy putting that puzzle together.
You are the puppet master.
Yeah. Yeah. And also I just you know, I love actors, and you know, they had some amazing actors on that show. And to be able to you know, work with them and help them and you know, and just you know, see their work come to life, that was a great, a great thing. Yeah. I don't know if I want to direct Elsbeth because I'm just on screen so much. I think it would I don't. I don't have that much i'd send you over that I think it might send me o it. Yeah, Well, is.
There anything more in the industry that is calling you? Like, what's your next chapter look like? Do you think you know what?
I'm being totally honest right now that this is the dream come true. So I really am doing my best to be present with it, to take care of it it, not overextend myself so that it gets compromised and focused saying focused but also knowing that the stamina that it takes really does require some downtime when I can get it, and not feeling like I need to pile in a
bunch of work during my downtime. If we're lucky enough to get a season four, I'll have three months off, and I don't necessarily want to do something that takes up those three months. I do need to refill the well, you know, because I really love this job and I want it. I want to honor it and do it just as in the best way. I know how. I'm part of that is I've got to take kind of take care of myself. Yeah. I think it's a you know that more than anyone.
It's a marathon, and it's easy to just spend it all. Yeah, and then all of a sudden you're like, whoa, Okay, I don't know how I'm going to do this.
Yeah, I know you'll You'll use up your body budget. You know, Shoot, it's I spent it.
How do you what does it look like for you, like during a work week, how do you choose yourself amidst that crazy schedule and all those demands.
I'm very protective of my morning time, so I will get up early, and it's tough when you have to get up with something that starts with a four.
It was a brutal Yeah, I miss those days.
No, you don't. You don't miss them, but you know, you'll get your you know, And I get up and I always try to at least do twenty minutes of pilates nice, get the body going, and then I'll do a ten minute meditation every perspect that's that's enough. Yeah, And that's like pretty much all I have time for. I can't go to the gym. I can't, you know,
I'll work my plate's instructor, who's wonderful. She made me these twenty minute videos that I can go to if I can meet with her and online, I will if I have, like you know, I happen to have a morning free, I'm not in the first scene. I'll meet up with her in person in the studio. But you know, I definitely find that when I don't do that, my body doesn't feel like it's ready for what it needs to do that day.
Right, right, it's you have to you're like a trained athlete.
Yeah, it's like an athlete. Yeah, it's an an athlete, especially with my character because the way I enjoyed playing her is very physically. You know, she's embodies things, a lot of energy. Not from Europe, it's the whole, you know, head to toe experience.
Well, I've loved getting to know you a little bit more. But before we go, Yeah, Carrie Preston, what was your last I Choose me moment?
I mean, this morning, I knew I was had a busy day, I had a me and so I got up early, I made my smoothie, I meditated, and I just chose to do absolutely nothing for an hour. And it was an important thing because then it lined me up and grounded me for what I had to do today. It's busy right now, New York City is insane, and doing nothing for me is not the easiest thing to do because I'm such a doer too, and so it
was a way to choose me. You know, it was something that I think I would maybe not normally do. I mean I could do it for ten minutes, but for an hour that was tough. Yeah, that's like.
An hour long meditation you did this morning basically.
Yeah, yeah, so good.
Yeah, just the best advice. I love everything you're about and I'm so excited for everything that's in store for you. You deserve it all. You're a good person. Carrie comes back with her colorfully enthusiastic Elsbeth on February twenty six, and please come back here for more of my conversation with Carrie Preston, when we jump into the challenges and advantages of aging on camera. Subscribe to this pod now to get notified when it drops.