Exclusive: Jonathan Tolins Talks Broadway, Opera, & Murder (Oh, My!) in ELSBETH

Eagle-eyed theater fans might notice a trend in the new CBS drama series Elsbeth: the show is full of Broadway stars. Laura Benanti, Jane Krakowski, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and André De Shields have all graced the small screen in this spin-off of The Good Fight, which premiered earlier this year. This isn't an accident. In addition to his television work, showrunner and executive producer Jonathan Tolins is a playwright with deep ties to the theater world.

The first Season 2 episode has just aired and, with a script written by Tolins, features another devilishly over-the-top murder. This time, the guest star is none other than Nathan Lane playing an equally over-the-top opera fanatic who goes to great lengths to enforce proper opera etiquette. Carrie Preston is back as the unconventional attorney Elsbeth Tascioni, who is again working with the NYPD to catch New York’s most unhinged murderers. 

Ahead of the new season, BroadwayWorld sat down with Tolins to discuss Elsbeth, the show's many connections to the stage, and why the series represents a more upbeat version of New York City than is often portrayed onscreen.

This interview has been condensed for clarity and length.

This new season kicks off with an exciting guest appearance by Nathan Lane as an opera lover. Did you have Nathan Lane in mind for the role from the beginning? 

I find it is not always helpful to have a specific actor in mind because then you don't end up getting them. But certainly, I knew that this character was not completely dissimilar to a character like Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata, which is a part that Nathan Lane played that catapulted him to stardom. I wrote this specifically because I'm a huge opera fan. I'm a panelist on the Metropolitan Opera quiz on the radio, and, when I started this show, everyone asked if I was going to do an opera murder. I knew it had to happen eventually.

I wrote the script, and Nathan was our first choice. He read it and said yes in a matter of hours. I cried, I was so excited. I just thought he was absolutely perfect for it, and it's always been a dream of mine to work with him.

Nathan’s character has an obsession with opera, which plays a central role in the episode. Why did you choose opera over Broadway or musical theater?

It's a little grander and there's more murder in opera than musical theater (Sweeney Todd, notwithstanding.) I've always wanted to do an episode of television about opera that didn't get any details wrong. Usually, it's not made by people who love it and care about it as much as I do. So we got to do things such as the music that describes the murder is the same music that describes the murder in Tosca. The moment he sees the knife is the moment Tosca sees the knife. So real opera fans are going to just lose their minds, I hope. I like to think this is the first network hour of television that has an Agnes Baltsa joke in it.

Broadway stars like Laura Benanti, Jane Krakowski, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson have made appearances on the show. How do you go about selecting guest stars from the theater world? Are they often people you’ve worked with in the past? 

We start with the story and the script, and then Findlay Davidson, the casting director, starts putting together a list of names. We have a really great history with theater actors-  not only in the special guest star part, but we're drawing from the New York acting pool. Theater actors are great with text and they have the ability to do something the same way more than once.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson was actually the person I wrote my play Buyer and Cellar for. I worked with Jane Krakowski on Schmigadoon! Pamela Adlon, who does an incredible job as one of our murderers this season, acted in a play that I wrote for The Pasadena Playhouse in 1998.

I have been working for a long time in theater and on television, which helps. Daniel Davis, who played Dr. Yablonski in season one, is back in season two because he happens to have an opera subscription. I was his dresser at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1984 when I was an apprentice, and I love that. I love getting to work with old theater people that I know.

A big part of the feel of the show comes from the New York setting. How does the city itself influence the tone and atmosphere of Elsbeth, and how important is it for you to capture that energy within the series?

Robert King, who created the show, said that this was not gritty New York. They wanted it to be the tourist side of New York. The premise is that Elsbeth had always loved New York and wanted to live here. Before this, I worked on a police procedural show called East New York that was the opposite. It was all about down-and-dirty New York.

In Elsbeth, we're not doing tragic murder- we're doing fun murder mysteries. We also try to have characters reappear because something very true about New York is that you run into people all the time. Even though it's this huge city, it also feels like a village. That makes the show feel a little bit more homey for viewers who watch it every week. We're creating a world that you can live in, and I love that feeling.

When approaching this show, did you draw inspiration from any other works that share a similar tone with Elsbeth?

I watched every Colombo to learn the format and how to structure a satisfying mystery. My last three TV jobs before this were The Good Fight, Schmigadoon!, and East New York. With the legal and political satire of Good Fight, the joy and musical comedy sensibility of Schmigadoon!, and the police procedural of East New York, I was, in a weird way, being perfectly trained to do this job.

Since Season One has aired, what has been the response from theater fans about the show?

I think we may be the first procedural that had our main character solve a murder with the hot honey rag from Chicago. There's a lot of theater stuff that's always happening in the show and if you get it, you get it. If not, you don't even know there was a joke that passed you by. I do hear from theater people who say "We see what we're doing!" and I love that.

In the opening moments of Season Two, I certainly empathized with Nathan Lane’s character’s frustration with the poor audience etiquette issues. What has been your worst theater etiquette experience, or one that sticks with you for all the wrong reasons?

I once saw people take out a chicken dinner during an opera and have dinner in their seats. That may have been the worst.

New episodes of Elsbeth air on Thursdays from 10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT on CBS. Watch a trailer for Season 2 below.