Up next for Preston is another season of "True Blood," premiering in June, and a comedy webseries she is co-directing, writing, producing, and starring in called "The Dody Show" about a woman who discovers her husband is cheating on her when he releases a sex tape. Ask Preston, who is married to fellow actor Michael Emerson ("Lost"), where she manages to find the time for such projects while juggling two hit shows, and she laughs. "I'm just one of those people that likes to be busy," she says. "I feel like it makes getting up in the morning very exciting, knowing that I have a lot of things. I'm a doer, not a talker. Maybe I'm Type A times a million but I find a great amount of satisfaction from it."
Back Stage: How did you first come across the script for the play, "Girl Talk"?
Carrie Preston: Kellie Overbey and I were doing a production of James Lapine's play "Fran's Bed" at the Long Wharf Theater. This must have been about eight years ago, and she showed me her play. She said, "I'm starting to write." And I said, "I'm starting to direct." At the time, it was called "Girl Talk," and I just fell in love with it. In the play with us was Marcia DeBonis. I said to Kellie, "You've got to let me direct this and we have to put Marcia in it." And so we did. We took it to the Barrow Group, which Marcia is a member of, and we did it in one of their studio spaces.
Back Stage: When you decided to make the play into a film, how much of a thrill was it to give Marcia that lead role in movie?
Preston: Well, it's the main reason that I kept trying to make this movie. I really thought it was important to give Marcia and all the women that she sort of represents the lead in a film. Because Hollywood won't do that. They'll give them supporting roles, they'll give them the funny sidekick or the secretary or the best friend or something, but I'm interested in taking women and knocking them down off the pedestal and messing them up a little bit by Hollywood's standards. And making things a little more real. And I'm not afraid to make people a little bit uncomfortable with that. We have been metaphorically and literally watching men grab their crotches onscreen for a good 100 years and I think it's okay to let women do that, too.
Back Stage: How did the rest of the cast for the film come together?
Preston: Kellie and Anne knew each other because they had acted together in "Twentieth Century" on Broadway. But they didn't really keep up with each other. So we gave the offer to Anne through her agent, but we didn't hear anything. You know, scripts come our way as actors all the time and you can't get to all of them. So Kellie called Alec Baldwin, who was also in the play, and said, "Hey, do you mind giving Anne a call?" She was flying from L.A. to New York and she read it on the plane. The plane landed, she called her agent and said, "Who's the director? I want to meet her." Luckily, I happened to be home in New York at that time. And we sat down for a half hour and she was all on board. Everything became very quick after that, and she's the one who introduced us to Alia Shawkat, because they had done "Cedar Rapids" together.
Back Stage: The film got into this year's Sundance Film Festival, which is a huge triumph. How did you react to the news?
Preston: I feel like it was the biggest moment in my entire career. I mean, it trumps pretty much everything else. Because I've been shepherding this project for eight years and to have put my heart and soul in it, and Kellie put her heart and soul in it, and all the actors and everybody; it was such a labor of love. And I've acted in at least nine or ten really, really good independent films that have not gotten into Sundance, I had no real expectations, because that's a very hard nut to crack. But at the same time, I felt like it was a really good fit for that festival.
