CSI: CRIMINALLY SEXY INVESTIGATOR
Marg Helgenberger uncovers Catherine’s steamy family secret in this week’s revealing ‘CSI’
TV Guide
January 23, 2006
by Craig Tomashoff
Marg Helgenberger uncovers Catherine’s steamy family secret in this week’s revealing ‘CSI’
When it comes to family values, CSI has always been more Osbourne than Osmond. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that when the parents of sultry crime-scene investigator Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) show up together for the first time on ‘CSI,’ this family reunion is as dark and deadly as everything else on TV’s hottest crime show.
In this week’s episode, after a murder during a party at the home of a formerly famous Las Vegas singer/diva (the appropriately cast Faye Dunaway), Catherine scours the crime scene. She come sup with evidence that “leads me to my father as a suspect,” says Helgenberger, whose character didn’t know her real dad (played by Scott Wilson) until just a few years ago. “Then my mother [Anita Gillette] drops by to visit me at the lab and wants information [about the case]. I find out she and my father have been seeing each other behind my back.”
Considering that Catherine is aware of her father’s mob-related past, she’s not very happy to learn about the relationship. “And he wasn’t very good to her mother when they were an item,” Helgenberger says. Things get even weirder when this showdown with her dangerous dad leads Catherine to realize “she really is her father’s daughter.” Executive producer Carol Mendelsohn promises that the murder investigation will take Catherine “much closer to home than she’d ever suspect” and that “there will be a big revelation about her parents.”
Why the sudden interest in Catherine’s family history? It turns out Helgenberger was instrumental in getting the episode on the air. She regularly pushes the producers to write stories focusing on the parents, and since there already was a planned story line evoking Rat Pak-era Las Vegas – “the world of Catherine’s parents,” says David Rambo, who penned the script – it created the perfect opportunity to bring Catherine’s family together.”
With CSI focusing on her TV relations, Helgenberger says she’d be excited about her real family getting involved in the show. She’s eager to have her husband, actor Alan Rosenberg, return for a second stint as a public defender with a dangerous attraction to Catherine. It just may happen, since Rambo admits they’d “love to have his sleazy lawyer come back and complicate Catherine’s life again.”
Helgenberger’s own personal life isn’t as complicated as Catherine’s – “Thank God my relationship with my real parents is not like that,” she says. But the actress does have her share of angst at home, most of it involving the homework of her 15-year-old son, Hugh. It’s a task that can be even more depressing than cleaning up after a multiple homicide. “It’s always been a struggle with the two of us,” Helgenberger says. “He’s got a strong will and he’s smart, a typical boy. You have to be smarter than them, and that’s not easy. I just wonder how to deal with [homework] without always turning into the bad cop.”
Perhaps she could take a few policing tips from the TV alter ego. “There are certain aspects of Catherine that I still hope to achieve in my life,” she says, laughing. “She’s pretty tough, pretty straightforward. When it comes to certain situations, I become shy. She’s a very confident person. Whereas as Marg, I sometimes feel intimidated or don’t know what to say.”
Not everyone who knows Helgenberger agrees. Says CSI costar Gary Dourdan, “Marg is a lot stronger than she lets on. You don’t mess with her.” In fact, Helgenberger seems pretty certain that she’d like to see the sexy but severe Catherine getting “a little out of control. Whether it’s romantically, with her father, with a crime, whatever.” Which could include a little private investigation with Dourdan’s Warrick Brown.
This detective duo have flirted on and off for years, yet their courtship seemed to hit a dead end earlier this season when Warrick revealed he’d just gotten married. But Helgenberger says the writers may be working on an episode where the two connect “in a much more intimate way,” She’s hoping they’ll “stirs things up” for the would-be couple.
“A lot of people want to see it and a lot are jealous of my character,” says Dourdan, who goes to the same gym as Helgenberger and is constantly besieged by men with crushes on his red-tressed costar. Should there ever come a day when he gets to shoot a make-out scene with her, he says smoothly, “I’d make sure I came to work early that day.”
The show’s producers won’t say whether Helgenberger will get her wish to let Catherine flash more than just her badge (“I’d like to be girly on this show…When I interrogate someone, I don’t have to wear pants!”). But near the end of this week’s episode, she does get to put on a dress for the first time in recent memory, for a provocative scene that both brings her closer to her parents and sets the stage for new friction with her folks.
There’s no telling what dangers the scene might lead Catherine into, but it’s safe to say fans should continue to keep an eye on the comely CSI.
“I’d love to show her emotional, softer side,” Helgenberger says. “There are times when I can be more vulnerable and soft while I’m solving a crime.”
If her work continues to bring Catherine closer to her parents, that could make for a real warm and fuzzy family portrait. Of course, since this is CSI, that snapshot would have to include at least one bullet-riddled corpse.
*A scan of this article can be found here.
