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‘CSI’ success no surprise to star Marg Helgenberger

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‘CSI’ SUCCESS NO SURPRISE TO STAR MARG HELGENBERGER

May 5, 2002

Tribune Media Services

By John Crook

The stratospheric success of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” caught nearly everyone, including CBS executives, off-guard when the show premiered in fall 2000.

Not, however, star Marg Helgenberger, who plays Las Vegas forensics agent Catherine Willows on the Thursday forensic medical drama.

”The first time I read the script — and I really owe my agent for bringing it to my attention — I knew that it was very fresh and unusual, especially for CBS,” she said in hindsight. ”And when I saw the first episode cut together — and our director will bear me out on this — I was the first one to say, ‘This will be a huge hit, if we just get the right break.’ Of course, we didn’t even have a time slot at that point.”

CBS gave the quirky and surprisingly dark “CSI” a time period immediately following a more mainstream offering, a contemporary re-invention of the vintage hit “The Fugitive,” which was heavily touted as one of the season’s probable hits. To the network’s dismay, that Tim Daly vehicle quickly tanked, but “CSI” not only took off like a rocket, it did so with an audience that included the younger viewers CBS covets so badly.

”That’s the one thing that caught me off guard,” Helgenberger admits. ”I certainly didn’t foresee how this thing would cross over into almost every age group. I recently heard about a 7-year-old girl who loves the show, which I found a little unsettling, because we can be pretty creepy sometimes. Then again, kids love creepy, don’t they?”

For older viewers, Helgenberger says, it’s easy to see what appeals to them about the show.

”Well, if I do say so myself, it’s just a cracklingly good hour of television,” she says. ”At the heart of every show is a good, solid mystery, then there are the fun procedural elements, where the audience watches us try to analyze what we have and piece together what happened.”

And clearly, viewers are enjoying those procedural scenes, which highlight some of the latest in evidence-gathering and analysis technology. Helgenberger admits to being a little bemused that her show is leading some viewers to make changes in their chosen vocations.

”People keep sending me clippings showing that student applications for forensic medical programs are going through the roof,” she says. ”I guess I first got a hint of that during the fall of our first season, when a woman came up to me at a diner and said, ‘My daughter is too shy to tell you this, but she is changing her career plans to enter forensics. Your show has really inspired her.’ Certainly, there’s a very special thrill in knowing that your work is connecting with viewers on that kind of level.”

Her prickly “CSI” character, a divorced mother who worked as an exotic dancer to put herself through school, is one of the show’s most fascinating, yet slightly enigmatic personalities, but the complex contradictions that make up Catherine Willows aren’t the toughest part of Helgenberger’s job, she says.

”In the pilot script, she was described as ‘single mother, ex-stripper,’ which I found pretty irresistible, you know? I mean, it certainly gives you a lot of room to work with! You have to imagine that the road that led her from stripping into this rigorous line of work, which she clearly loves, must have been an odd one, and it’s fun to explore little aspects of that journey as we go along.

”But you want to know what the real acting challenge is? It’s the procedural scenes, where we are looking at monitors or staring at computer screens as some scientific process is under way. Usually those scenes have absolutely no dialogue, just us watching the process, and as an actor, you have to find someway to ‘engage’ with what is going on. If you don’t, it’s very easy to get upstaged by all the gadgets and gizmos around you.”

Helgenberger has been a recognizable face ever since her Emmy-winning 1988-91 run as hooker K.C. Koloski on ABC’s “China Beach.” She considers herself generally approachable for fans, although she admits that more recently she has gotten a little warier on that issue.

”I’m from a rural farm community and I worked at a meat packing plant to put myself through college,” she says with a laugh, ”so I don’t think I walk around projecting the ‘fame thing.’

”To tell you the truth, though, I’ve had a few anxious moments when we have been doing our on-location filming in Las Vegas. Not to make sweeping generalities, but it’s kind of a weird town in that the people who come up to you usually are acting differently than they would in another setting.

”Maybe they’ve had a little bit too much to drink, maybe they’ve just hit the jackpot, but most of them seem a little ‘elevated,’ let’s say, and that leads them to say and do things out of character. And there are crowds, crowds everywhere, so filming there is one of the few times when I actually felt I needed our security people. It just became overwhelming.”

Any available free time is spent with husband Alan Rosenberg, who has his own hit CBS series in “The Guardian,” and their 11-year-old son.

”We are blessed to both be working, but I don’t get to spend as much time with my son as I would like,” Helgenberger admits. ”Whenever I can, I take him with me to the set, like last Saturday, where he and his friends get to poke around and hang out, which they all find pretty cool.

”But it looks like I’ll be spending my summer hiatus with both of them, unless something like “Erin Brockovich” comes along,” she adds of the Oscar-winning film in which she played a cancer-stricken mother. ”Ideally, it should be a really good role in a really good piece and film for about three weeks in Los Angeles.”

She bursts out laughing. ”That’s not asking for too much, is it?”

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