‘Elsbeth’ Star Carrie Preston Teases ‘Complexity’ and ‘Fun Scenarios’ for Midseason Premiere (Exclusive)

Elsbeth is finally returning from its winter hiatus this week, and Carrie Preston told PopCulture.com what to expect.

In “Ol’ Man Liver,” airing on Thursday at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, “Elsbeth battles a wealthy biohacker (Hamish Linklater) who will do anything to stay young, including an extreme diet, vigorous exercise.”

Elsbeth hasn’t been on since December, when the midseason finale, which was the Christmas episode, ended on some pretty troubling news about Alec Bloom. The New York mayoral candidate, played by Ivan Hernandez, was revealed to be lying about his upbringing after Teddy grew suspicious and asked Wagner to look into him. While Wagner did tell Elsbeth, she wasn’t exactly sure what to believe, as the two had been getting somewhat closer thanks to Marissa Gold (Sarah Steele).

“Elsbeth really trusts Alec, and she trusts her son. So she’s kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place there,” Preston explained. “And the heart wants what the heart wants, and sometimes you don’t wanna see things in both cases. So, we’ll have to just see how it unfolds.”

“But she is the mother, and she has more years and more experience in her life than her son does,” she continued. “So, she’s also somebody who really trusts her own instinct and her own ability to really see when someone is manipulating her or lying to her or what have you. So, there’s a lot of complexity there, which I think makes for really good TV.”

Alec Bloom is not the only person that Elsbeth will be getting tangled up with in the midseason premiere. As the logline states, she will be duking it out with a wealthy biohacker, Archer Kopunek, played by Gen V and Midnight Mass star Hamish Linklater, following a murder. Preston shared what to expect when Archer and Elsbeth cross paths, and it’s going to be an entertaining time.

“He plays a biohacker who is somebody who’s doing everything they can to extend their life and to make themselves stay as young as possible as long as possible, including extreme diet, extreme exercise, extreme tech, and extreme murder,” she said. “So that’s where Elsbeth comes in and immerses herself in this world of biohacking, which she really didn’t quite understand to the extent to which people go to do those things. So that creates some really fun scenarios for the show, and was really fun for me.”

This is actually not the first time that Preston and Linklater have worked together, as he appeared in two episodes of The Good Wife during Season 4 in 2012 and 2013 as a completely different character, so it “was fun to see him again,” Preston said.

“And, also, we’re both theater people. We know a lot of the same people,” she continued. “So it was like having an old friend come back and play something completely different. Hamish was totally game. We had a lot to do in this particular episode on a very short amount of time. We were out on location in this big house. And so a lot was being asked of Hamish above and beyond. We would be shooting one scene in one room, and then when they were setting up cameras, Hamish would have to change clothes, go into another scene with a third camera set up to shoot him doing some montage or something.”

“So luckily, he’s somebody who, not only has no problem doing that, but really seemingly relished it,” Preston expressed. “So we got lucky there because there are some actors that maybe would have opted that. But he was 100% game and wanted to just make something great. And then we had Scott Ellis directing that episode, and he’s a big theater director as well. He’s done a ton of film and TV, but he originally started in the theater, as did we. So, it felt very collaborative in a way that I loved.”

Between Alec, Archer, murders, and who knows what else, Elsbeth will have her hands full when the series returns. Tune in on Thursday at 10 p.m. ET on CBS when the Elsbeth midseason premiere airs to see what happens. All episodes are streaming now on Paramount+, where new episodes are available on Fridays.