‘Elsbeth’ Casting Director on Finding the Perfect Guest Stars for Killer Cameos — and Which One Gave Her Chills

 More often than not, the people who cross paths with eccentric and astute lawyer-turned-detective Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) fumble her name on the first try.

It’s a running joke in CBS’ procedural “Elsbeth” that its namesake takes in stride, but it’s also an honest reflection of how some in Hollywood first reacted to the series. Audiences have known Elsbeth for more than 15 years as a stalwart, fan-favorite recurring character on Robert and Michelle King’s “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight.” But when the Kings decided to spin off the character into her own “Columbo”-style series, casting agents got tongue-tied.

“I’d call up somewhere like CAA, and they’d say, ‘How do you say it? Elizabeth? What’s the name of the show?’” casting director Findley Davidson tells Variety. “That was really hard in the beginning.”

That isn’t the case anymore. After a huge first season (and key castings like Jane Krakowski and Jesse Tyler Ferguson to pave the way), “Elsbeth” has become a destination for top talent to play killer for the week. In Season 2, Nathan Lane, Pamela Adlon, Mary-Louise Parker, Laurie Metcalf, Alyssa Milano, Vanessa Williams, Matthew Broderick, David Alan Grier, Michael Emerson and Tracey Ullman all stopped by to get blood on their hands — and the audience was in on it.

The show’s inverted story format is built so that each episode begins by showing the guest star committing their crime. Then, it’s up to Elsbeth to prove it with tenacity, hard evidence and a fuzzy hat.

To populate this murderer’s row of, well, murderers, Davidson races against the clock to court talent and get them to New York in time for filming. While streaming series plan filming schedules months in advance, broadcast television remains a different beast.

“It’s a little stressful, if I’m being honest, because the cadence is fast,” she says. “The deadlines keep coming. There’s no reprieve when you’re working in episodic television. There’s a fantastically talented writers’ room and 20 episodes, but they don’t know where the entire season is going. So for some episodes, I’m lucky if I get the script delivered three weeks before filming. Other times it can be closer to two, which is when I start to sweat a little bit.”

Each conversation with talent is bespoke, says Davidson, but ultimately, it boils down to a simple pitch: “Do they want to come play with us for 10 days?

People jump at the chance for a few reasons: the relatively short time commitment of one episode versus a series regular role, the chance to subvert their own persona by playing a killer and the promise of going toe-to-toe with Preston.

“Carrie just sets the tone so beautifully on set,” Davidson says. “She’s been doing this for a long time; she’s friends with many of these actors. She’s just a big, big draw because people love working
with Carrie.”

Davidson has leaned heavily on New York’s theater pool with Lane, Parker, Broderick, Laura Berlanti, Billy Magnussen and Arian Moayed. But scheduling conflicts can derail plans for anyone, so Davidson puts names aside for a rainy day, something she did with Ullman, who appeared as a fortune teller.

“There are certain scripts where I get chills because you read them, you think of a short list of names and you just have an instinct that they’re going to respond to it,” she says. “If you look at all her characters from ‘Tracey Takes On…,’ you just know that Tracey is game to jump in and play characters with a capital C.”

Looking ahead to Season 3, Davidson has a few more names on her wish list: “Phoebe Waller-Bridge is someone who I think would be interesting and a little bit of a departure from what we’ve seen.”