MARG HELGENBERGER TAKES CHARGE ON ‘INTELLIGENCE’
nypost.com
January 5, 2014
By Deborah Starr Seibel
Look closely at Marg Helgenberger’s ring finger in the new CBS drama, “Intelligence,” and you’ll notice what she calls a “teeny, tiny” diamond ring. It was never in the script. “I said to the property masters, ‘I want to wear a wedding band, even though there is no mention of a husband,’” says Helgenberger, who played a single mother for more than a decade on “CSI” and won an Emmy playing a prostitute on “China Beach.”
But now, she’s Lillian Strand, head of the top-secret US government agency charged with cyber security. Her mission: To supervise super spy Gabriel Vaughn (played by “Lost” star Josh Holloway), who has a nanocomputer chip implanted in his brain. As the physical embodiment of everything right and wrong with cutting edge technology, Vaughn is capable of mentally infiltrating enemy strongholds. But he is also in constant danger of being hacked or infected with computer viruses. Strand has to somehow protect him, and keep him in check.
Playing the woman in charge, Helgenberger’s trademark red hair is pulled back, controlled. Her dark suits are as sharp and precise as a military uniform. But Helgenberger chooses to think of Strand as the kind of woman who cuddles, or remembers cuddling, with man, not machine.
“I was thinking that the writers would eventually reveal a husband or that I’m still in love with my ex-husband.” she says. “On ‘CSI’ I played a woman who was divorced, and this time, I just wanted to play someone who was married. A powerful woman like this, making very important decisions like this, I don’t think she wants to go through life alone.”
She could be talking about herself. In 2009, Helgenberger announced the end of her 20-year marriage to actor Alan Rosenberg. And she was quoted at the time as saying that it was an “overwhelming” year, because on top of ending her marriage, their only son was off to college and she had just turned 50. Three years later, there was another major split: Leaving “CSI” after eleven-and-a-half years, and after becoming one of the highest paid actors on television with an estimated take-home of $375,000 per episode.
“Certainly I adored the cast, crew and writers,” she says. “It wasn’t that I was needing to get out of that situation. But creatively, I felt like I needed to switch it up. I didn’t think about going back into [another TV] series until later because I was really hoping to find a play.”
But a terrible thing happened to Helgenberger — and everyone else — on the way to doing New York theater: Hurricane Sandy. Helgenberger had signed on to do a week of performances as part of the revolving cast in “The Exonerated” at the downtown Culture Project in October, 2012. “I got there Saturday night, I was supposed to start rehearsing Monday, and Hurricane Sandy hit Sunday night,” she says. The theater went dark. The hotel where Helgenberger was staying, The Bowery, lost power. She moved in with friends uptown, and only got to perform twice at the end of that trying week.
“It was quite an experience, but I was glad I was there,” she says, “because I have a lot of friends who live in New York.” Helgenberger says it was especially painful to see what happened to the Jersey shore, “because my ex-husband, whom I’m still good friends with, is from New Jersey and I spent a lot of time there. That really got to me.”
But this is a woman who can tough it out. She grew up in rural North Bend, Nebraska. Her mother was a nurse, her father, a meat inspector. At age 11, she was picking crops in the soybean fields. After that, she de-tassled corn and did stints as a de-boner in her father’s meat packing plant. “I maybe made $1.50 an hour,” she recalls. “I wasn’t afraid to get my hands dirty.”
She played the French horn in high school, became the weather girl for the local TV station, and went on to get a B.S. in speech and drama from Northwestern University. Staying in Nebraska, she says, was never in the cards. “Because I had the desire to explore,” she says. “I wanted to go somewhere completely different, and the ocean always appealed to me because I was on the swim team. The ocean just seemed like a fantasy.”
The west coast became home as Helgenberger’s career took flight. In the roles she’s most known for, she’s managed to combine tough, smart and sexy. Even now, at age 55, and running this fictitious federal agency, Helgenberger says that she’s enjoying the fact that “the buck stops” with Lillian Strand.
“I have a fair amount of dialogue, and sometimes, it’s not the easiest stuff. There’s a lot of ‘spy speak’ and terminology and acronyms. I’m not bored on this show, not at all.”
And it’s a world away from picking soybeans in Nebraska. “Yeah,” she laughs. “I’ve come a long way.”