Carrie Preston knew she was not the obvious choice to play a sitcom mom on NBC’s “Crowded.”
First, there was her quirky persona, seen to Emmy-winning effect as eccentric attorney Elsbeth Tascioni on “The Good Wife.” Then there was her hair, a Brenda Starr red that’s closer to Peg Bundy (Katey Sagal) on “Married with Children” than Debra Barone (Patricia Heaton) on “Everybody Loves Raymond.”
Network executives wondered if Preston should tone it down. “My hair?” she asked. “If you want to lose my entire fan base, go ahead.”
On “Crowded,” Preston plays Martina Moore, a happily married mother of two who, faced with empty nest syndrome after her adult daughters move out, decides it’s time to make up for lost time with her husband, Mike (Patrick Warburton). Impromptu moments of intimacy and dunks in the hot tub are sharply curtailed when the young women (Miranda Cosgrove and Mia Serafino) decide they can’t hack it in the real world and move home.
The series, created by Suzanne Martin (“Hot in Cleveland”), takes a national trend story — that one in five 20-year-olds are living at home — and adds a layer of light struggle that gives rise to laughter.
“A lot of the conflict is internal because Martina thinks of the kids as her friends,” says Preston, 48. “The marriage got a whole resurgence of energy when the kids moved out and now they have to share their space again.”
It should be said that the actress — who is married to Michael Emerson, star of “Lost” and “Person of Interest” — has nothing in common with Martina. She does not have children. After she moved out of her childhood home in Macon, Ga., to attend the University of Evansville in Indiana and then study theater at The Juilliard School in New York, she never went back.
“In my time, there was a stigma attached to living at home; you were a failure in some way,” she says.
“What attracted me to [‘Crowded’] was the material, and the opportunity to film in front of a live audience,” Preston says. “I’m a theater baby, but I hadn’t been on stage in a long time. Also, I was ready to play a lead. I was ready to move up and this one came knocking. There were so many things in the plus column, not the least of which was James Burrows [‘Will & Grace’] directing the bulk of our episodes.”
Graduating to series star meant that Preston had to abandon her recurring “Good Wife” role (she made her last appearance Feb. 21). “When the show got picked up, it limits the amount of episodes you can do on another show. Everyone gets proprietary when you’re the lead,” she says.
Preston is filming “Crowded” in LA, where she keeps a home. She and Emerson are based in New York, where she filmed “The Good Wife” and he worked on “Person of Interest,” the forgotten CBS series that has been hovering in limbo with no set air date for its fifth-season premiere.
“The episodes are all done and ready to share,” she says. “He’s with me in LA to launch ‘Crowded’ and figuring out what’s next. They haven’t officially canceled the show. So he’s enjoying being with family for the first time in a decade.”
“Crowded” series premiere 10 p.m. Tuesday on NBC