Elsbeth EP Promises ‘We'll Still Honor Female Friendship as Major Part of This Show' Following Kaya's Departure
Elsbeth is losing not only a colleague, but also one of her closest friends following the recent news that co-star Carra Patterson will not return as a series regular next season.
As reported by our sister site Deadline, the actress will appear in a guest-star capacity in Season 3 as her character, Detective Kaya Blanke, moves on to a new career opportunity. In this week's episode, Kaya received an offer to join a special law enforcement task force that will require training in Washington, D.C., as well as undercover work, taking her away from New York. Kaya was hesitant, at first, to leave behind her current job, but Captain Wagner encouraged her not to pass up a possible once-in-a-lifetime professional opportunity.
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'Kaya is still such an important part of the show and is not leaving the world of the show. She will be back. We love her and love the character, and she'll be back as often we can have her,' showrunner Jonathan Tolins reassures TVLine, echoing his statements to Deadline. But there's still plenty of concern and disappointment from fans who are worried about losing the friendship between Elsbeth and Kaya, which has been one of the CBS drama's strongest elements.
'I would say in addition to making the show, we are fans of the show and love the show,' Tolins says in response to the viewer reaction, 'and we have all the same feelings, and we're going to keep trying to preserve and honor what we've done so far and to keep all those feelings going forward. … Female friendship is very important to our show, and I think we will still honor female friendship as a major part of this show, even though we'll be seeing a little less of Kaya.'
Meanwhile, Kaya's new journey presents an opportunity to 'open up some wonderful stories' for the series' titular lawyer, star Carrie Preston tells TVLine, adding that working with Patterson is 'such a gift.'
'But what I love about our show is that we don't get too comfortable in anything, and so we enjoy those moments together [between Elsbeth, Kaya and Wagner] when we have them, and we will continue to enjoy them more when we get them, and we'll probably appreciate them even more because we won't be getting them every day,' the actress shares. 'So I think it's an opportunity to really enrich the character and the storylines, to have a fresh new take on what Elsbeth is like when she doesn't have someone like Kaya to lean on. How is she going to walk onto a crime scene without her? What's that going to look like?'
For Tolins, Kaya's task-force job represents the culmination of a two-season arc for the officer, who wanted to be a detective from the very beginning.
'We are also excited that we got to see this character achieve her dream and to overcome some obstacles to getting there,' Tolins says, 'and the relationship between Elsbeth and Kaya is one that is always so supportive, and Elsbeth supporting Kaya in this new adventure she's going on, it all feels really good for these characters.'
Adds Preston: 'They so brilliantly and deftly just took [Kaya] to this place where it became a natural thing for her to be elevated and promoted. And it's just the structure of our show [that] Elsbeth doesn't work with the same detective on every case. And so, we came to this point, as well, story-wise, where Kaya needed to fly and echo, in some ways, what Elsbeth has been doing, which is reinventing herself. And so, we have this wonderful little parallel now between what Kaya is doing and what Elsbeth is continuing to do.'
fans, are you feeling a little bit better about the Kaya/Patterson news now? Hit the comments!
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Joseph McCarthy,' helped bring about his end.) As in the film, McCarthy is represented entirely through projected film clips, echoing the way that Murrow impeached the senator with his own words. It's a combination of political and backstage drama — with a soupcon of office romance, represented by the secretly married Wershbas (Ilana Glazer and Carter Hudson) — even more hermetically set within the confines of CBS News than was the film. It felt relevant in 2005, before the influence of network news was dissolved in the acid of the internet and an administration began assaulting the legitimate press with threats and lawsuits; but the play's discussions of habeas corpus, due process, self-censoring media and the both-sides-ism that seems increasingly to afflict modern media feel queasily contemporary. 'I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument,' says Clooney's Murrow to his boss, William F. 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It's choreographed, like a dance, which actors must repeat night after night, putting feeling into lines they may speak to one another, but send out to the farthest corners of the theater. Clooney, whose furrowed brow is a good match for Murrow's, did not attempt to imitate him, or perhaps did within the limits of theatrical delivery; he was serious and effective in the role if not achieving the quiet perfection of Strathairn's performance. Scott Pask's set was an ingenious moving modular arrangement of office spaces, backed by a control room, highlighted or darkened as needs be; a raised platform stage left supported the jazz group and vocalist, which, as in the movie, performed songs whose lyrics at times commented slyly on the action. Though television squashed the production into two dimensions, the broadcast nevertheless felt real and exciting; director David Comer let the camera play on the players, rather than trying for a cinematic effect through an excess of close-ups and cutaways. While the play generally followed the lines of the film, there was some rearrangement of scenes, reassignment of dialogue — it was a streamlined cast — and interpolations to make a point, or more directly pitch to 2025. New York news anchor Don Hollenbeck (Clark Gregg, very moving in the only role with an emotional arc) described feeling 'hijacked … as if all the reasonable people went to Europe and left us behind,' getting a big reaction. One character wondered about opening 'the door to news with a dash of commentary — what happens when it isn't Edward R. Murrow minding the store?' A rapid montage of clips tracking the decay of TV news and politics — including Obama's tan suit kerfuffle and the barring of AP for not bowing to Trump's Gulf of America edit and ending with Elon Musk's notorious straight-arm gesture, looking like nothing so much as a Nazi salute — was flown into Clooney's final speech. Last but not least, there is the audience, your stand-ins at the Winter Garden Theatre, which laughed at the jokes and applauded the big speeches, transcribed from Murrow's own. And then, the curtain call, to remind you that whatever came before, the actors are fine, drinking in your appreciation and sending you out happy and exhilarated and perhaps full of hope. A CNN roundtable followed to bring you back to Earth.
