Dianne Wiest and Lois Smith Join ELSBETH as Season 3 Guest Stars

Broadway veterans Dianne Wiest and Lois Smith, along with Tony Hale, have joined the guest star lineup for Season 3 of Elsbeth, a growing list that also includes Tony Award winner Lindsay Mendez, Amy Sedaris, Julia Fox, Andy Richter, and Stephen Colbert as a late-night host. 

According to Deadline, Wiest will appear in episode 7 as the Reverend Mother Constance Mary Cabot, who attempts to save her convent from the threat of a profane pop star. Smith will star in episode 5 as Delores Feinn, a financial supporter of the New York City poetry journal Pidgeon Press. William Jackson Harper will also appear in this episode. In episode 6, Hale will play Craig Hollis, a paranoid CEO who builds a protective safe room underneath his lavish townhouse.

The CBS detective series, led by Carrie Preston, will return for its third season on October 12, 2025. The first "sneak peek" episode will air that Sunday, with the second episode following only four days later on Thursday, October 16. The following episodes will continue to premiere during the 10:00 ET timeslot on Thursdays.

The series features an impressive roster of Broadway talent, with stars like Jane Krakowski, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, André De Shields, Laura Benanti, Matthew Broderick, Vanessa Williams, and more. The Season 2 finale featured many returning guest stars and a big, star-studded rendition of Chicago's Cell Block Tango. Take a look at our exclusive conversation about the episode with writer and showrunner Jonathan Tolins. and check out our guide to all the Broadway actors in the series here.

Elsbeth stars Emmy Award winner Carrie Preston as Elsbeth Tascioni, the astute but unconventional consent decree attorney utilizing her unique point of view by working with the NYPD to catch New York’s most well-heeled murderers. Season 2 of the critically acclaimed series brought new cases and challenges when mistakes of the past come back to haunt Elsbeth, her boss Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce) and Detective Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson). 

Elsbeth is based on the character featured in The Good Wife and The Good Fight. Robert King, Michelle King, Jonathan Tolins, Liz Glotzer, Erica Shelton Kodish, Bryan Goluboff and Gail Barringer serve as executive producers. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

With a wide-ranging career across stage and screen, Dianne Wiest has received four Drama Desk nominations and appeared on Broadway in several productions, including Frankenstein, Othello, In the Summer House, Salome, and, most recently, 2008's All My Sons. For her screen work, she has won two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress for 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters and 1994’s Bullets Over Broadway.

In 2020, Lois Smith won a Tony Award for her performance in Matthew López's The Inheritance. She previously received nominations for The Grapes of Wrath (1990) and Buried Child (1996). She also starred Off-Broadway in the revival of The Trip to Bountiful for which she received an Obie Award for Best Actress, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Lucille Lortel Award, and a Drama Desk Award. Smith is an ensemble member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.