If “Steel Magnolias” were rewritten by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Pedro Almodovar, you’d end up with something very much like “Claws.”
TNT’s eccentric drama takes a group of women who work at Florida Nail Artisans of Manatee County and puts them in harm’s way — when the salon’s owner, Desna (Niecy Nash), finds herself enmeshed in a money laundering scheme with some white-trash mobsters headed by the odious Uncle Daddy (Dean Norris, “Under the Dome”).
Desna’s employees are hardly shrinking violets. Quiet Ann (Judy Reyes) guards the salon with a baseball bat. Jenn (Jenn Lyon) has a good left hook. And demure Polly (Carrie Preston) has recently been sprung from the slammer after serving time for identify theft.
For Preston, most familiar to viewers from her Emmy-winning turn as apparently absent-minded lawyer Elsbeth Tacioni on “The Good Wife,” Polly might be the second best TV role of a lifetime. “She has quite a checkered past,” she says. “Don’t let her pretty, suburban look fool you. She got along just fine in prison. She knows how to roll with and give the punches.”
‘Don’t let her pretty suburban look fool you. She got along just fine in prison.’
- Carrie Preston
Now that Polly has paid restitution to her victims, who were senior citizens, she’s broke, living in a sleazy motel and has thrown herself on Desna’s mercy. “She’s very indebted to her for bringing her back in the fold and giving her job,” Preston says.
Not surprisingly, Preston and her co-stars had to learn to do nails, called “hooves” in professional jargon. “We had three nail technicians on set. We all had to get the basics down and we found each of us gravitated to something we were really good at,” says Preston, who really got the hang of doing the “gel nail,” a technique that combines powder and liquid and can look like “Elmer’s glue,” if things go awry.
“When you were doing a scene, you have to do 50 takes. They did a great job at shooting inserts,” she says.
As a daughter of the South — the actress was born in Macon, Ga. — Preston felt immediately comfortable on the set of “Claws,” which was filmed in New Orleans, with Sarasota, Fla., used for exteriors.
“I’ve had the great fortune of playing a lot of Southern characters,” she says. In one of her strongest scenes, Polly shows up at New Year’s Eve party in a green chiffon prom dress, looking like a refugee from “The Glass Menagerie.”
“I wore this dress to Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration and it still fits,” Polly coos.
The dress was a thrift-store purchase and required no alterations. “One of the wonderful details about it was it’s held together on one side by safety pins,” Preston says. “Polly is held together like that. Trying to hide all of her flaws.”
Now that filming is finished, Preston is en route to New York, where she lives with her husband Michael Emerson (“Lost,” “Person of Interest”), whom she says is enjoying some “time off” after appearing in the Signature Theater company’s production of “Wakey Wakey.” She’s waiting to hear if she’ll appear in more episodes of “The Good Fight,” the “Good Wife” spinoff that airs on CBS All Access.
“It’s the best role I’ve ever been given,” says Preston, who compares working on the spinoff like going to a “different party” at the “same house. I’m hoping someone in the second season has a reason to hire Elsbeth.”
“Claws” 9 p.m. Sunday on TNT