‘Elsbeth’ Team on Mystery About Wagner & Elsbeth’s Tough Search for the Truth

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Elsbeth series premiere.]

How can you not love Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston)? Well, Captain C.W. Wagner (Wendell Pierce) isn’t a big fan, and right now on Elsbeth, that’s just with him thinking her job is to observe the NYPD. Imagine his reaction when he finds out why she’s really there!

As is revealed at the end of the series premiere, Elsbeth is in New York to dig into Wagner. Though she thinks the Department of Justice is wrong about him (he’s “been nice to me”), that doesn’t mean he can’t be corrupt, too. She’s no longer a defense attorney, and right now, her job is to go after the truth.

“She took the assignment for the same reason we’re moving away from a law show [The Good Wife and The Good Fight] into a police show, that it’s away from the battle of who wins and representing a client, even if they’re guilty and lying and knowing they’re lying, and still fighting for them to the area of facts, of hunting for facts,” co-creator Robert King tells TV Insider. She’s “now about the truth. And even Wagner pushes her on that. She took the job because she wants to believe in something. What are the facts, or what is the truth here, and what can I lean on as something that is right and wrong? I think that is the difference between The Good Wife universe and this universe.”

Co-creator Michelle King admits they can share “very little” about the investigation and what Wagner may or may be up to, though does reveal, “it’ll start as a season-long arc, and then we’ll see where it goes from there.” Robert does say it explores “guilt or the shades of guilt” and “eventually, what Elsbeth is going to see over the course of this season is thinking you’re hunting for the facts is not as easy as it seems. There are so many shades of truth.” While it is a serious storyline, he adds that Elsbeth is “meant to be a comic show.”

Like the audience, Pierce was kept in the dark, about his character. “They recently have given me just a little bit more,” he shares. “It keeps an actor on his toes. I’m discovering it as we go along.”

What we do know is that we will learn more about his history, which will be rolled out “like breadcrumbs that lead you to a wonderful finale years from now,” says Pierce. Part of the reason why Wagner doesn’t want Elsbeth around is “he’s not someone who wants that to come out. And so the attention that he’s getting is not something that’s pleasing to him—quite the opposite. But that’s great drama and great writing because we have it in the past. We have moments of, what happened to Tony Soprano? What happens at the end of The Fugitive, the one-armed man, will he ever capture the one-armed man? And now we’re going to add to that list, what did Captain Wagner do that Elsbeth is investigating?”

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As we find out more about his character, “there will be times where you’ll be suspicious of Captain Wagner and there’ll be times that you might worry about Captain Wagner, what has he done and how that might have an impact on him,” he previews.

Elsbeth’s investigation into the captain will make for an interesting dynamic going forward. “She really likes Wagner, so she’s conflicted about her real purpose of being there,” Preston says. “She’s torn between wanting to find the truth and serve the truth and also stay in this job.”

This is a struggle for Elsbeth because she’s “somebody who really has integrity and she’s quite talented at what she does, but she also really wants to be a good person and looks up to people, and when she finds somebody she respects and admires, she doesn’t want to judge them in any way,” explains Preston. “And so I think she’s probably secretly hoping that the Department of Justice is wrong about Wagner, and the more she uncovers about him, the more she’ll really be conflicted. And of course, we have the great Wendell Pierce playing that role, so he’s bringing something interesting and layered, just like all of his other work.”

Pierce also praises Preston and what she brings out in him on set. “I love working with her. Carrie is such a giving actor and such a fun actor to work with and so inventive,” he shares. “Being on the set has sparked something in me because I’m the happy-go-lucky guy on the set now, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed. And it really comes from the spirit that Carrie has in the way that she works, in the way that she develops Elsbeth. I really have to work to kind of put that shell of Captain Wagner back on to do the scenes because between scenes, I’m so joyous.”

Elizabeth Fisher/CBS

But might that change a bit onscreen as the show continues? Says Pierce, “as gruff and grumpy as [Wagner] may be, he recognizes the goodness in Elsbeth, especially when she shows how intelligent she is. In spite of it all, he can put aside his own anxieties and attitudes about her and towards her and recognize good work. You’ll see the charm in him recognizing that she’s a good investigator and a good lawyer.” And so he will slowly warm up to her, a “give-and-take [that] really adds to the dimensions of our relationship.”

Because of that, when it eventually comes out that Elsbeth is in New York to investigate Wagner, that has to affect their relationship. “Like all betrayal, I suspect it’ll be hurting and disappointing,” Pierce speculates. “But even then with what I know of where we’re going, whatever his personal feelings, he’s going to recognize she is a good investigator. And maybe that makes him reflect on what is his true north? What was the thing that made you become an officer? What happens is he sees a little of himself in her when he was a little less jaded and more open-minded. ‘Oh, I remember when I was innocent.’ And so while it will be a betrayal, it will remind him that he has gotten off track. That’s what I suspect. But there’s still within that there may be another discovery about what’s happening. Things aren’t always what they appear to be. So you never know. These writers are very clever.”

Executive producer Jonathan Tolins has described Elsbeth and Wagner’s relationship as “a bit Lou Grant, Mary Richards [The Mary Tyler Moore Show],” according to Michelle King. Adds Robert King, “the difficulty is, as it is with the pilot, the facts are going to take her away from where her heart is. Her heart is, she likes this guy—she actually likes a lot of people, even a lot of the villains that she catches—and the facts are going to take her to a point where she may have to face something that she doesn’t want to.”

Do you think Wagner is corrupt? What do you think is going on with him? Let us know in the comments section below.

Elsbeth, Thursdays, 10/9c, CBS