Elsbeth fans, prepare to welcome the leading lady back to primetime in the 2025 TV schedule, because the Season 2 winter premiere is nearly here! And much like the season premiere with Nathan Lane, CBS' hit drama recruited a guest star renowned for his comedy to play a villain. Eric McCormack, who starred in nearly 250 episodes of beloved sitcom Will & Grace across more than two decades, is on board as a bad guy, and showrunner Jonathan Tolins explained to CinemaBlend why he was the right man for the job.
McCormack guest stars in the Season 2 winter premiere on Thursday, January 30 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, called "Unalive and Well," and he's definitely not playing a sitcom kind of character this time around. As charismatic wellness founder Tom Murphey, he catches the eye of Elsbeth Tascioni during the investigation into the death of a young man, and not in the way that any bad guy on Elsbeth should want to catch her eye! (Firefighters, on the other hand...)
And with "Unalive and Well" as the first episode following the fall finale that featured The Conners star Laurie Metcalf as a killer, fans can have faith that Tolins knows what he's doing in casting sitcom stars for darker roles. (You can stream Metcalf's episode now with a Paramount+ subscription.) The showrunner explained why Eric McCormack was the perfect fit for the winter premiere, saying:
Eric's a really good actor, and you also believe he's someone who could operate in the wellness space, because he's so fit and trim and charming. We do very well with actors who have some comic sensibility, and Eric McCormack is a master TV comedian. Also, what's so great about it, I think, is that you get to see surprising depth and scariness coming from him in that episode. He's actually very chilling in the part. You totally believe why he is successful at what he does and how people find him charming, and how he's able to manipulate people, but you also find him scary. I think fans of his are going to be really impressed by what he does in it.
Eric McCormack hasn't exclusively worked in sitcoms over the years despite being best known as part of the Will & Grace cast. He dipped into sci-fi for streamers with a Netflix subscription with all three seasons of Travelers before it was cancelled in 2019. He also starred in TNT's Perception for all three seasons and, most recently, had a key role in Hulu's The Other Black Girl.
Plus, Elsbeth herself might not be in the mood for laughs in the winter premiere, as the fall finale ended with her past from Chicago resurfacing. She'd gone to great lengths to keep people in her new life from learning any dirty details, even dodging questions from her beloved son after Teddy's surprise arrival. After clarifying whether Elsbeth fans need any The Good Wife or The Good Fight background for this storyline about her past, Jonathan Tolins ruled out 2025 picking up with a time jump:
Not really. [laughs] It's TV. We try to be rational, but we're not totally scrupulous about exactly how much happens in a week between episodes. Our Christmas episode took place during SantaCon, which is about three weeks before Christmas, but we do have a Valentine's Day episode coming up. We're not that persnickety about how much time is actually passing between episodes. What can I say? [laughs] It's so hard to keep this thing all clear as it is.
Elsbeth of course has its serialized elements, with Noonan in Season 1 and now Michael Emerson as the Moriarty to Elsbeth's Sherlock in the role of Judge Crawford, but the CBS hit is still mostly procedural, which generally means that the amount of time between events doesn't particularly matter. It is a safe bet that some of Elsbeth's secrets going public is going to matter quite a bit in the second half of the season, and it remains to be seen how Eric McCormack's character fits in.
Of course, the showrunner didn't explicitly confirm that McCormack will be playing the bad guy, but any longtime Elsbeth fan knows to keep a watchful eye on any big name guest stars who are mixed up in a case. Don't forget to tune in to the winter premiere on January 30!
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