PAT DUGGINS-- Hi, I'm Pat Duggins, and this is a special preview of tonight's APR notebook. My guest tonight on APR notebook is Emmy award winning actor Carrie Preston. She's currently starring in the CBS crime drama Elsbeth, but back in 1994 Preston played Ophelia in a production of Hamlet with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Elsbeth is a spin off of two TV shows, The Good Wife and “The Good Fight.” But even the Bard of Avon was known to do at least one spin off that I know of. When Shakespeare wrote Henry the Fourth, Parts one and two, audiences went nuts over a supporting character named John Falstaff. Shakespeare was so impressed he wrote “The Merry Wives of Windsor” with Falstaff as a lead character. I mentioned that Falstaff /Elsbeth, connection to Carrie Preston, here's what she had to say.
CARRIE PRESTON-- It does make me happy to think that people who are watching Elsbeth and really liking Elsbeth may or may not have ever even seen the good wife or the good fight that Robert and Michelle King and who created the show, and now Jonathan Tolins, who is our showrunner and the head of our writers room, understand that this is a its own thing. It's not married to these other shows. It's not even a legal show. The first those first two shows are law shows. This is a police procedural. So I think everybody was really smart and how they transitioned this character into her own show by not trying to live up to something that fans became really attached to in “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight.” But, you know, taking it to a whole nother place. And I think it happened at the right time. I think it's a time when people are wanting to, you know, watch shows that make them feel good about things, to make them feel like there's justice in the world, to have some laughs, to watch a character that is, you know, seasoned, but still so curious and so has a childlike wonder and a positive view on the world and that that's something that is, you know, very practiced on her part. It's studied on her is intentional on her part.
PAT-- Do you pick out your costumes for Elsbeth?
PRESTON-- Oh, no, I we work with, I work with a brilliant costume designer, Daniel Lawson. He is one of, one of our finest in the industry. He he started, or actually, I met Dan when we were both little babies. We were he was a prop intern and I was a non equity Actor at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. This was 1989 and so to see that now, this is what we're both doing. You know that we're creating this stuff together, and that kind of history is not lost on me. You know, he's, he's the one who he started with, The Good Wife, and so he's been costuming Elsbeth since her very first appearance, and and now that he's got her at the center of a show. He really understands how to use the costumes to throw off, you know, the killers like they see all this color and all this pattern and all this interest, and they get distracted, and they think they don't. Shouldn't have to take this woman very seriously, and meanwhile, she's gonna bring them to justice, and they have no idea.
PAT--Different subject. One of the things that we do at Alabama Public Radio is that we mentor journalism students from the University of Alabama. And one fellow, one of the very first young people that I ever worked with here…you may know him. You probably don't, but anyway, his name is David Kumbroch. He's the Director of Science Communication for the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson's research in Colorado Springs. And, I've read extensively about how this is a subject you know, Parkinson's research that you've chosen to champion, what got you into that?
PRESTON-- Well, unfortunately, my father had Parkinson's, and he had it for quite a long time before he passed away. And so, you know, I really saw, you know what it the toll that it took on on him and on those around him. And I also had the great fortune at the beginning of my career to work with Michael J Fox, right after he got diagnosed, it was pretty early on, and I saw, you know what he was doing already, even back then, to bring attention and awareness and what he has done and his organization has done. Since then is really extraordinary. I mean, we've made great strides. They've made incredible strides in research, and, you know, potential cures, or certainly, you know stuff that can help people who have it to deal with their symptoms, and just the research and is necessary with something like that, and, and you see how many people I have friends who are touched with it and and have to deal with it and are dealing with the challenges of it, it's it's more prevalent than one would think. And so I think the more we can shine a light on it and get that research funding, the better for you know, people in the future who are going to have to deal with it.
PAT-- And I can only imagine that you know, not only just the patients, but their families, appreciate what you do. If I get my dates right, I hope that I am your father was still with you when you won your Primetime Emmy Award back in 2013 Am I right on that that is correct?
PRESTON-- Yeah.
PAT-- Did he have to say anything fatherly afterwards that comes to mind?
PRESTON-- Well, he had, you know, huge, a huge photo of me with the statue, you know, then in his house. And every time anyone would come, you know, he would point it out. And he was my dad, you know, is always, was always very, very proud of all three of his kids, and what we all you know, what we did and what we chose to do with our lives. And you know, when you're a young person and you want to get into the arts, you know, you hear these stories about a lot of parents who want to talk you out of that, who want to tell you that you can't make a living that way, or you need to get a day job, or you need a real job, or you're never going to be able to make a living that way. You know, there's a lot of discouraging things, because I think parents get scared. You know, they get scared when their their kid says, you know, this is my passion.
PAT-- Join me for my complete conversation with actor Carrie Preston of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and CBS’ Elsbeth tonight at 7pm on Alabama Public Radio.
