‘Elsbeth’: J. Smith-Cameron on Izzy’s Disastrous Deb Ball and Plot for Revenge (Exclusive)

J. Smith-Cameron was the guest star tonight’s new Elsbeth, and she broke it down with PopCulture.com.

The Emmy-nominated actress portrayed Izzy, the director of New York’s most prestigious debutante ball.

As per usual, the episode was crazy and entertaining as someone was murdered with a sword, and you never knew what to expect. Smith-Cameron’s Izzy was dealing with quite a lot, but she was also hungry for revenge, and it was decades in the making. But was justice ultimately served? Take a look at what she had to say. (Interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

PopCulture: In the episode, when we meet Izzy, she’s as busy as ever with the deb ball and is getting annoyed by a wealthy parent. And we flash forward a year to the present, and she seems to be very deceptive and sneaky, seemingly to keep up a ruse. She confronts said wealthy parent named Sterling, saying he destroyed her life 44 years ago at the deb ball. She gets revenge by killing him. It’s quite the way to start the episode. What did you like most about being able to introduce Izzy this way?

J. Smith-Cameron: Well, I loved it. I mean, I had this idea of… she was written to be very affected, but I was like, what if she has a transatlantic sort of accent? And they’re like, “Yeah. Yeah.” And then I was like, “What if she thinks she’s Anna Wintour?” And so I brought in with me, I ordered off the Internet, like a little beige bag. And the costume designer, when I had my fitting, we talked about it on the phone first, and he loved the idea, and we just committed to it. And we had so much fun.

I wanna make it clear. I do not think I was playing Anna Wintour, but I was playing someone who desperately wanted to emulate her and to be fabulous like she is. So I thought that was kind of fun because Anna Wintour is known for, among other things, throwing a very big ball. It’s very important in New York. And so I love that because you get to introduce all those elements right away.

And then I just love playing with John Bedford. The way he’s very funny. He’s very quick. And then by the time we get to the murder scene, I mean, her idea, which is a miracle at work, is so far-fetched and imaginative that I mean, I just had a ball. We had a special fight coordinator there, and we were always trying to figure out the choreography so that it looked like it was credible that it could’ve stabbed through. And then they also were like, “Oh, and the way, Elsbeth knows this is the tilt of the sword.”

So he just finessed it, the guy who did that choreograph. It was really clever, and it was fun. The whole thing was a romp. There were days when I was nervous because it’s a lot of material in a quick time. But it was that kind of fun nerves, fun jitter nerves.

PC: We find out that Izzy’s father had died in the ‘80s and actually the day after Izzy’s disastrous deb ball, which is connected to her obsession with deb balls in the future. How do you think what happened with her those two days affected her and turned her into this manipulative woman that she’s known as today?

Smith-Cameron: Well, I mean, it turned her into an assassin. I think it tested over all that time, and I think also having a persona that’s put on the way that it was written that way, but also the way I took it in that direction. I think that she’s desperate to somehow rewrite the past. And when he shows up, she just finds she can’t. Just the very fact that he’s wormed his way into the ball has undone all the carefully put-together things that keep her psyche in check. And he shows up, and he insists on getting his daughter in. And then, first, my character tries to keep them out.

And then he pays enough money that they can’t afford not to let his daughter in. And I think her world unravels, and she’s not thinking very clearly. But she still somehow comes up with this very imaginative, rather far-fetched scenario, and somehow has pulled it off. But then, she can’t get by Elsbeth Tascioni.

PC: We find out that Izzy actually has a stepsister named Reina, whom she never mentioned, but Reina reveals that Sterling had destroyed Izzy’s dress back in 1982. What do you think was going through her mind back then when it happened, especially knowing how she turned out to be in the future?

Smith-Cameron: Well, what we do know from the story is that she wasn’t the typical deb because she did not come from a lot of money, or her parents were having hardship at the time. And so she borrowed her father’s credit card, bought her dress that she was going to return the next day. And then, he is this very callow, kind of… he’s a cat, the John Bedford Lloyd character, Sterling. And he takes his sword. So she’s very, despite her murder, her revenge is right down to the cheek, and slices her strap so that the tag says half off. And he slices it so that it will fall and be half off. And, I mean, that would be humility under any circumstance, because bear in mind, that debutantes are, like, older teens or early 20s, they’re young.

And that would be scarring as it is. And then it also means she can’t return the dress, and so she probably carries a lot of guilt about her father’s demise because he gets in a car accident. And you kind of assume he was under duress, that he found out what happened and got into this accident. So I think she’s just spent a huge amount of effort to wipe out what happened to her that night and to kinda rewrite history like that ball is a success and so much of it’s a success that I now run the f—ing ball. And then the fact that Sterling worms his way in with his daughter just undoes that right away, and so she comes up with this plot.

PC: On top of what she did the night that Sterling was murdered, she ends up framing Elsbeth for stealing a pair of gloves, and then we find out what her plan was due to some photoshopping she did. She had killed Sterling, and her entire plan is revealed thanks to Elsbeth. What was your favorite part about playing this really, really interesting and fun, deceptive character?

Smith-Cameron: I really enjoyed the humor of her because she’s pretending to be this great lady, but she’s quite critical and sarcastic. I mean, there’s laughs that are built in the show that aren’t on purpose, but she’s amusing herself. There’s a lot of put-downs she gets, she’s the only one around to enjoy it, but she has fun that way. I like playing a sarcastic person.

I loved being someone of that world that’s so foreign to me. I loved wearing those beautiful costumes and pretending I was Anna Wintour because I think like Izzy, I’m fascinated by Anna Wintour. She’s endlessly fascinating. So I think all those things and working with Carrie was a great joy. One always wants to play a murderer at some point in my career. So this is the second time I’ve played one on TV, actually. I did one on Criminal Intent.

PC: Aside from being able to work with Carrie again and playing a murderer, is there anything that really drew you to the role of Izzy?

Smith-Cameron: That constant humor. And that time, the pollutant aura around her of the super-rich. And then that got me to have that idea to model her after Anna Wintour. That wasn’t in the script at all. That was an inspiration that came to me. And that was what fascinated me, so I kinda ran with that idea.

PC: Considering all that Izzy did not to be caught for Sterling’s murder, is there anything that you would have done differently with the plan?

Smith-Cameron: Yes. I wouldn’t have done the whole thing. The whole thing is a crap idea, frankly. But, yeah, I mean, there’s a fairy tale quality that Debutante falls. And that episode, the writing in the episode really features that. And the whole killing is sort of out of a romance novel or something. It’s kind of grand. The whole way I figure out how to do it would have been much simpler to slip him something in his cake or his cocktail. Wouldn’t it have been? So I don’t know. She wanted to act it out.

New episodes of Elsbeth air on Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, streaming the next day on Paramount+.