Carrie Preston, who has a home in Philipstown, will be honored by the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at its Oct. 13 gala. She stars on CBS in Elsbeth, which begins its second season Oct. 17.
How did you end up in the Highlands?
My sister and brother and I always dreamed of having a place outside of New York City. My brother is also an actor and my sister, Leslie, works at the Fashion Institute of Technology. We would do short-term rentals in the area and fell in love with it, particularly Main Street in Cold Spring, which is so charming. After we bought a property together in 2019, my brother, John, immediately moved into the guest house! We’re up there every chance we get. We closed on the sale in February 2020, a month before the pandemic shutdown, and ended up living there together. We also get our mom up from Georgia, where we grew up. It’s such a great area.
When did you get the acting bug?
John started doing community theater [in Macon] when he was 11 or 12, and I wanted to do it, as well. By the time I was 12, I had started my own little street theater company with all the neighborhood kids. I took acting very seriously. During the summer after my freshman year of college [at the University of Evansville], I interned with Georgia Shakespeare. We did the tiny parts, worked in the box office, helped build sets. During other summers, I worked at Shakespeare festivals in Utah, Santa Cruz and Alabama. The Shakespeare role I have the most fondness for, of course, was my Broadway debut with Patrick Stewart in The Tempest. I trained at Juilliard to do classical theater, but there’s not much classical theater, and certainly not a lot of Shakespeare, on Broadway.
Elsbeth is a quirky lawyer whom you first played on The Good Wife. Are you like her in any way?
We’re both good at multitasking, but she’s genius-level brilliant, so I wouldn’t dare compare my intellect! We both have a sense of wonder and positivity. Living with a glass-half-full attitude has served me well. If I were a lawyer, I would be a litigator, to use my performing skills.
You’re also a director. What’s an early lesson you learned?
I directed independent films before television, where you have more control because it’s your project, soup to nuts. With television, it’s a collaborative effort that largely happens before the actors arrive. I never fully appreciated that because it’s not a process that actors are privy to. We arrive once all the decisions have been made. And, of course, once the actors arrive, everything gets multiplied by 1,000 percent.
You were recently a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Can you take us behind the scenes?
Sure. About a week or two before you appear, you get a call from a producer and have quite a lengthy conversation so they can pitch topics to the host. I arrived about 30 minutes before the show taping began. You wait in a dressing room; I had my team with me, such as my publicist. The producer comes by to review possible questions — you don’t go out there cold, but you don’t know specifically what the host will ask. Because Elsbeth always carries tote bags, I suggested I could give Stephen a tote full of Southern treats as an icebreaker. Stephen came over while I was in the wings and was so kind. He complimented me on The Holdovers [in which she played a teacher, Lydia Crane] and he went and sat down and, boom, I was on. It’s a little like being shot out of a cannon. I was so nervous. I haven’t done a play in a long time, but when I walked onto the stage, I looked up at the audience and thought, “OK, I know this feeling.”
Photo by Shawn Flint Blair
