Carrie Preston: The Star That Pops in Crimson
Carrie Preston
Photo Credit: Carrie Preston. Photographer Meagan Shuptar. Photo Retoucher Brianna Kish. Hair and Makeup Paula Heckenast/City Lights Makeup. Nails Mad Nails/Morgan Dixon. Fashion Stylist Katie Schuppler. Dress Thierry Roger Couture.
Carrie Preston: The Star That Pops in Crimson
Carrie Preston
Photo Credit: Carrie Preston. Photographer Meagan Shuptar. Photo Retoucher Brianna Kish. Hair and Makeup Paula Heckenast/City Lights Makeup. Nails Mad Nails/Morgan Dixon. Fashion Stylist Katie Schuppler. Dress Thierry Roger Couture.
Carrie Preston: The Star That Pops in Crimson
Carrie Preston
Photo Credit: Carrie Preston. Photographer Meagan Shuptar. Photo Retoucher Brianna Kish. Hair and Makeup Paula Heckenast/City Lights Makeup. Nails Mad Nails/Morgan Dixon. Fashion Stylist Katie Schuppler. Dress Thierry Roger Couture.
Carrie Preston: The Star That Pops in Crimson
Carrie Preston
Photo Credit: Carrie Preston. Photographer Meagan Shuptar. Photo Retoucher Brianna Kish. Hair and Makeup Paula Heckenast/City Lights Makeup. Nails Mad Nails/Morgan Dixon. Fashion Stylist Katie Schuppler. Dress Varyform Design.
After only minutes of flipping through your favorite channels, the face of actress and director Carrie Preston is sure to appear on your screen. The Emmy Award-winning talent has been bouncing around from hit to hit since her star power caught the attention of audiences everywhere and is slowly dominating the television arena.
Taking a break from the superstar life, the beaming redhead gave me an hour of her time to discuss not only the projects of her past, but the upcoming work she has planned for the future. Specifically, we talked about the series Preston recently finished shooting, “Claws.” The show is a dark comedy-drama that will air its final season on December 19th. After taking my eyes off the adorable puppy snoozing in the background of Preston’s Zoom square, a two-inch-by-two-inch window into her world, I went straight in with my questions.
The self-proclaimed “lifer” told me about how she has been acting for years, growing up as a theater kid alongside her brother.
The Georgia native continued on, fondly describing her childhood through her sweet Southern accent, “I was really drawn to character roles. Even when I was nine years old, I wasn’t playing Snow White. I was playing the Fairy Godmother and I was asking them for fanny pads and funny glasses.”
After successfully acting her way through young adulthood, Preston attended Juilliard, and from there began to get cast.
Many actors, Preston included, bring the skills learned from years of theater into their on-screen performances.
“I understood how to create a role and just how to sustain the performance of a role. Because when you’re doing theater, you have to keep your stamina up and you have to do that same thing over and over and over again.” Preston continued saying, “And so, it came rather naturally getting on set and understanding how to sustain the requirements and the role, all day long.”
Preston remarked on when her career began to take off, and how her acting became more and more in demand, “I would say the turning point for me, as far as film and TV goes, was ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding,’ which was my first movie and was a pretty big Hollywood romantic comedy. And then for television, I would say ‘True Blood’ kind of put me into a casting bracket that I hadn’t been in before.”
Along with being a unique and talented actress, Preston is also an accomplished director, even having directed multiple episodes of “Claws” along with another one of her acting projects, drama series “The Good Fight.”
“Even when I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be involved in storytelling in every aspect that I could,” she shared.
Preston went from a kid running a rinky-dink theater company with her neighbors to co-creating Daisy 3 Pictures, a production company run by herself, Mark Homes and James Vasquez.
I was curious to know, from Preston’s perspective, whether each set she works on has its own unique atmosphere, or if they all tend to blend together. Preston answered saying her experience as a director has given her a unique view on the size and scale of each project, and how that affects the way a set runs.
“‘True Blood’ was so giant we would have such a huge ensemble and we had many different units sometimes shooting at the same time. You would sometimes be working on two or three episodes at the same time. And then, for a four-camera sitcom you’re rehearsing that for five days, and then you shoot it in front of a live audience. And so that’s a completely different situation,” Preston explained.
We began to dive deeper into “Claws” and Preston’s experience on the creation of the series. Almost immediately she went on to describe the beauty of New Orleans, where the majority of the show was shot despite fictionally being set in West Florida.
“It’s probably my favorite city in the country. I had only visited there before, but after having had the opportunity to live there for five to six months out of the year for four years straight, I really began to feel like a local.” Preston started smiling saying, “The city really took us in, and we had such a great time. There is never a moment where there’s not some kind of festival or parade, and there are so many celebratory community-based events happening there all the time.”
Preston went on and said, “Our crew, because a lot of them live in New Orleans, would bring the spirit of the city to our community on set. It felt like we were a little small town within that small town.”
After discussing the fabulous city filled with life and culture, Preston widened her bright blue eyes and gushed over the cast and crew of “Claws,” referring to them all as family. “We were very tight. We lived to make each other laugh, to make the work as strong as we could and to embrace everything that the writers were giving us with. It was a gift being on that show.”
“There’s a whole group of us actors that have pretty much a 24/7 text thread going.” Preston looked down at her phone and grinned. “Today even, I look down right now and there are texts coming in from our thread. So that’s pretty rare. It’s been one year since we finished shooting. You know, the fact that not a day goes by that I don’t hear from them, you can tell how special that project was.”
So many productions were put on hold during the pandemic including “Claws,” while the cast and crew were in the middle of filming their fourth season. However, after safety guidelines were put into place, the series was one of the first to continue shooting. Preston revealed that although the limited interactions with her castmates were “a bummer,” her acting wasn’t hindered in the way I would have thought.
“Once we’re shooting, the masks come off and we’re doing the scenes, you kind of forget about all that and you just concentrate on the scene the same way that you would in any other circumstance,” she revealed.
Preston talked about the amazing work the writers had to do in order to continue shooting “Claws” safely. Whether that was turning face-to-face communication scenes into Facetime conversations or removing actors from scenes all together, they were able to be safe while keeping the integrity of the show alive.
“It really spoke to the creativity of all the writers and the creators and the actors that we were all able to solve those problems as they came in and continue to finish out this show that we all love,” Preston disclosed.
My last question for Preston was one I’m sure everyone is wondering after the success of “Claws:” what are her plans for the future?
I was happy to hear that Preston will be continuing her work as a director.
She proudly told me, “I am going to be directing another episode of ‘The Good Fight’ for season six. I’m looking forward to that in the new year, and I have a couple of directing projects that are independent features that I’m attached to, so it’s just a matter of if the producers find the funding.”
Along with directing, Preston has no plans to stop her successful run as an actor, constantly looking for the next “gig.”
