Pop, six, squish, ah ah, Cicero, Elsbeth? That’s a pretty decent summation of the Season 2 finale of the CBS series starring Carrie Preston, which took its title character to prison to finish out its sophomore season.
**Spoilers for the second season of Elsbeth on CBS**
Sitting down with DECIDER in advance of the episode, “Ramen Holiday,” Preston and EP Jonathan Tolins opened up about bringing the bold vision to life by reintroducing murderers that Elsbeth Tascioni (Preston) has put away in the first two seasons, including Margo Clarke (Retta), Freya Frostad (Mary-Louise Parker), Alex Modarian (Stephen Moyer), Joe Dillon (Arian Moyed), and Pupetta Del Ponte (Alyssa Milano).
In the penultimate episode, “I’ve Got A Little List,” Elsbeth is arrested for harassing Rob Bedford (Billy Magnussen) while investigating a murder he committed, landing her in prison until her trial. The opportunity to put the spirited lawyer in lockup and have her face her arrestees — with a musical number to boot — was too good for Tolins and the other writers to pass up. One small issue: the logistics.
“It was such a nightmare — well, I wouldn’t say nightmare, but scary. Figuring out who could be in it, who’d be willing to be in it or available with their schedule and getting the rights to ‘Cell Block Tango,’ all these things,” Tolins explained to DECIDER. “We were scrambling until the very last minute and gambling. We were actually choreographing ‘Cell Block Tango’ before we had the rights because it took quite a while to get answers from everybody.”
Of pulling off the feat, Tolins added, “I still can’t believe it came together. It was a big swing, and I’m thrilled that we did.”
Read on for DECIDER’s full interview with Preston and Tolins.
DECIDER: Excited to talk about the finale but before we get to that, we have to talk about the shocker in the penultimate episode: Kaya, Carra Patterson, is leaving. Can you talk to me a little about the decision for her character to move to recurring?
JONATHAN TOLINS: Well, I don’t want to speak for Carra, but we were all excited that they — first of all, that relationship emerged very organically into something much greater than I think anyone knew going into the show, how wonderful it was, it is, and continues to be. And the character had this dream of being a detective and it was so wonderful to watch her face obstacles in the way of her achieving that dream and then to achieve it. And so her position professionally has changed. I want to make it clear: she is not leaving. The character of Kaya remains in the world of Elsbeth. She’s just not going to be there every day. We love Carra and we loved Kaya and we’re gonna want to have her as often as possible but I think it will be interesting to see Elspet have to deal with not having Kaya all the time next to her. And you know, that’s where we’re building from there.
Carrie, how do you predict Elsbeth dealing with the loss of her closest ally on a day-to-day basis in Season 3?
CARRIE PRESTON: She’s still a part of Elsbeth’s life and is going to continue to be someone that Elsbeth loves and treasures. And Elsbeth also wants to see her friend fly and achieve her dreams and be happy in her career, because Elsbeth is in hers. The one thing I love about the show is it’s so much about a woman reinventing herself, moving to a new city at a certain part in her life, when she doesn’t have to. She’s achieved such success in Chicago, and she makes this decision to move and start this whole new career, and now we see Kaya doing that as well. So thematically, there’s a wonderful parallel there. And also I think it’ll be interesting and create good tension and stuff to see how Elsbeth is gonna do when she’s so used to relying on her friend. How is she gonna enter these cases with these other uniformed officers who have different personalities than Kaya did? We have an opportunity to inject the show with a lot of new and fresh energy and storylines, even though we will miss Carra, very, very much.
You guys definitely don’t shy away from Elsbeth or any of the other characters doing scary things, like going to prison and being confronted by a bunch of murderers she put away. How early into Season 2 did this idea come about?
TOLINS: Well, the idea originally started as an idea to do a murder story in a prison but she has to go into prison. Then we said, “Well, what if the prison were filled with people that she had sent there? I mean, that would be really fun.” And then we said, “Well, they should do ‘Cell Block Tango.'” But I did pitch it to CBS in my first meeting about this new season and everybody loved that idea. So that was always the goal. It wasn’t until very late in the season where we said, “Let’s go all the way. what if Elsbeth is put in prison?” And that’s when this happens. Which was a great way to up the stakes and go there in a surprising way… that was always the goal. We always thought that would be fun. No matter what, that will be fun. But it was such a nightmare, I wouldn’t say nightmare, but scary. Figuring out who could be in it, who’d be willing to be in it or available with their schedule and getting the rights to “Cell Block Tango,” all these things. We were scrambling until the very last minute and gambling. We were actually choreographing “Cell Block Tango” before we had the rights because it took quite a while to get answers from everybody. I still can’t believe it came together. It was a big swing, and I’m thrilled that we did.
It makes me think there could be a full-blown musical episode down the line. It feels very Elsbeth to hit her head and then we find out everything she thinks is in song. Would you do a musical episode?
TOLINS: Are you pitching right now? I’m truly open to it. I mean, the one thing I would say about us ever doing a full musical episode is that this was the perfect practice. We now know how much it takes in terms of pre-record and planning and all that. It’s hard when you’re doing episodes in eight or nine days. It’s a tough thing. And I think it would have to probably be a finale to do it.
I know you mentioned working out schedules was difficult for this one. Was there anyone from Season 1 or Season 2 who you wanted to pull in? Had you known from the start it would be Modarian (Stephen Moyer) who would get murdered?
TOLINS: We asked a lot of people and just schedule-wise, they weren’t able to do it. My first version of the outline had a whole bunch of scenes that depended on “Well, if it’s this character, then there’ll be this scene,” and figuring out how they would work in the plot. I mean, we knew early on that we wanted Alyssa Milano’s character because she had mafia ties, which would help us with the plot. We also tried to lean into using people who were from earlier, much earlier episodes, so not people we’d seen recently. In terms of Alex being the murder victim, we needed the other prisoners to be suspects, and Alex seemed like possibly the most killable because he was a womanizer and his murder, in some ways, had the least redeeming qualities because he killed this young acting student he was having an affair with just to keep his job at the school. And we could see the other, especially the other female characters being really pissed about that. So it gave them sort of believable motivations. We were nervous that Stephen wouldn’t be able to work it out with his schedule. But he worked it out early enough that we didn’t have to figure out, “Well, okay, if it’s not him as the victim, who else is it?” Yeah, we got very lucky.
Carrie, what was it like for you to welcome back all of these people you presumably like but who your character has a complicated relationship with?
PRESTON: Our show has set it up where something like this could happen in the world. In Season 1, I actually did a dance number with Keegan-Michael Key that was from Chicago, the “Hot Honey Rag.” We set it up that this is a world in which we could have these things. And so for me, it was a thrill to have all of these incredible guests that I had the great privilege of playing with one-on-one come back as a group. And I just felt like a kid at my at my own birthday party, you know? I’m hosting my own birthday party where I got to have all these people that I love in one room together and some of them knew each other and some didn’t. And for us all to, between the takes, the conversations that we were having, the things that we we’re talking about, the support that we’re giving each other, it was just, it’s what you want. And the fact that they wanted to clear their schedules to come and play with us when they certainly don’t have to. They have illustrious careers. It really spoke to the set and the atmosphere that Jon and all of us try to create, which is one where people want to come and play in our sandbox with us.
Speaking of that sandbox, we’re coming back for Season 3. I’m sure you’re probably already working on it, anyone who might be heading to this playground?
PRESTON: We are not already working on it. I get a break of like three weeks. So we start, the writer’s room starts on May 19 and we start shooting in July. You know, everyone thinks that we sort of have the stars before we have the scripts and stuff. In almost every case, we come up with a story, we write a script and then go out to [actors who could work]. As the show’s gone on and word’s gotten out that people have a good experience doing our show, we do hear from agents like, “My client so-and-so really loves the show and would love to do one.” But you don’t know, there’s no way to know everybody’s schedule. What we really have to do is just write the best thing we can and know that that will attract the right people. And we’ve been incredibly lucky and pleased with who’s come. The one exception was that I had worked before with Matthew Broderick and I always knew I wanted him to do the show. And so once I could lock in his schedule, I pitched him a few different characters and we decided which would be best for him. I did write that knowing he was gonna do it, but that’s the only time I think we’ve known in advance. Maybe that’ll start happening. I’m available if anyone wants to call.
Well, I wanted to also ask about one of my favorite parts in the finale: Elsbeth’s inmate number is “24602.” And then I noticed everyone else is wearing their episode number.
TOLINS: Very good, well done.
Are there any other Easter eggs that fans of the show should be on the lookout for?
TOLINS: Everything in it is a callback, pretty much every item on the book cart is something from a previous episode.
PRESTON: Yeah, that’s right, the novels.
TOLINS: There are also books by other murderers on the cart. I don’t know if you can see them that well. There are references to Chloe, who was Jordana Brewster’s character, Chef V (Pamela Adlon) makes a brief appearance in a flashback. There are callbacks to people, like even little things, where Margo says, “Elsbeth, I still love that name.” She had said on her episode a year ago, “Elsbeth, I love that that name,” which I think was a Retta ad-lib, but we just sort of call it back to that. It should be like a party for fans of the show.
Aside from the musical number, is there a scene you are most excited for the fans to see?
TOLINS: For me, it’s the rehearsal of the play because it’s such an absurd situation. And there are so many former guest stars in that scene. And I’m very proud of the writing because each one gets to have one or two lines and they have to like pop for that character. But all of the actors in that are so funny and so in the pocket of what we’re trying to do there that it makes me thrilled watching it.
PRESTON: Definitely those two obvious ones, but also the end, the party, the going away party for Kaya in the precinct. There’s something just like really warm about it, but it also sets the mission for going forward from everything that Elsbeth has gone through, beautifully written by Jon and it was really moving to play that scene on the day and look in the faces of all these people that I’ve grown to love and treasure and deliver that speech to them. So I’m looking forward to people seeing that.
The first two seasons of Elsbeth are currently streaming on Paramount+.