Carrie Preston’s CBS procedural Elsbeth is adding Julia Fox to its roster of season 3 guest stars, with the actor set to play a social-media figure whose brand is built around bereavement. CBS describes Fox’s character, Raquel Drabowski, as “a Staten Island widow turned upscale ‘grief influencer’ and reality star.”
The new season begins with a special Sunday premiere on October 12 at 9:30/8:30c, then shifts to its regular Thursday slot on October 16 at 10/9c, part of the network’s fall rollout that pairs Elsbeth behind Matlock.
The premiere will lean into late-night TV satire, featuring Stephen Colbert as fictional talk-show host Scotty Bristol; Amy Sedaris, Andy Richter, and Lindsay Mendez also appear in the episode, with Mendez playing an NYPD officer who intersects with Elsbeth on a comedy-world case. David Cross is slated for episode two, continuing the series’ strategy of stacking its “how-catchem” format with recognizable faces.
Fox’s casting arrives as Elsbeth adjusts its core ensemble. Carra Patterson, who played Officer-turned-Detective Kaya Blanke in the first two seasons, steps back from series-regular status and will return in a recurring capacity after her character’s promotion to an undercover assignment.
The show, a spinoff of The Good Wife and The Good Fight, centers on Preston’s Elsbeth Tascioni consulting with the NYPD and has steadily expanded its New York sandbox with industry-adjacent storylines and guest roles that echo the city’s media, theater, and nightlife scenes.
CBS has positioned Elsbeth as part of a tightly scheduled October rollout, giving the series a post-NFL Sunday sampling before it returns to Thursdays for the season. The move mirrors the network’s recent playbook for boosting awareness of returning dramas and is backed by steady audience figures that have encouraged aggressive guest-casting throughout the run.
