SAYING GOODBYE TO CSI – AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MARG HELGENBERGER
Entertainment Weekly
January 6, 2012
After twelve seasons, Marg Helgenberger is getting out of the crime scene business. And EW was on the set for the final moments as the CSI star signed off. (Yes, there were tears â and tequila).
By Lynette Rice
Marg Helgenberger cannot stop fidgeting. She tucks her hair behind her ears and yanks at her leather jacket. She shuffles around the set and makes small talk with the crew. When itâs finally time to shoot another take of her last scene for CSI, Helgenberger is suddenly at a loss for words. âGod, whatâs the line?â she calls. âHow could I leave this place?â the script supervisor replies.
Itâs no wonder Helgenberger is having trouble: Her character, Catherine Willows, is about to say goodbye.
On Dec. 7, the 53-year-old actress became the third original star (behind Gary Dourdan and William Petersen) to depart the long-running crime drama. All of her current costars â Ted Danson (DB Russell), George Eads (Nick Stokes), Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle), and Paul Guilfoyle (Capt. Jim Brass) among them â were there to appear in Helgenbergerâs final scene and to bid farewell to the unofficial den mom of the franchise.
âIâm not leaving saying, âI gotta get out of this job,ââ explains Helgenberger the next day, while nursing a hangover (she and Fox threw back a few tequila shots after leaving work the night before). âThere may have been certain locations that sucked, or certain story lines that I really didnât like. But there was always something that made me laugh. Itâs just that, instinctually, I felt like I had to step back.â
To the end, CSIâs producers refused to believe that Helgenberger would actually depart the 11-year-old series that made her a household name. (She had originally wanted to leave at the end of her contract in May, but they persuaded her to stick around through the Jan. 25 episode.) Even after CBS announced that it had cast Elisabeth Shue as Catherineâs replacement â sheâll first appear as a former colleague of Dansonâs character on Feb. 15 â the writers had planned an eleventh-hour plea to keep Helgenberger inside the yellow tape.
âWe love our Margy,â says exec producer Carol Mendelsohn, who got teary-eyed on her starâs final day. âBut in those hours that we spent doing her last scene, we listened to Marg, and I actually made peace with her decision. You canât fight it anymore.â
Instead, the producers packed up Catherineâs props â her vest, her gun, and some work gloves â and gave them to Helgenberger as a bittersweet reminder of the high-profile role that brought her back to series TV a decade after China Beach. âI just thought it was a really special, 21st-century Sherlock Holmes-like mystery,â says Helgenberger of what first attracted her to the job in 2000. âWhat made it special was all the technology. Science was the star. And there had never been a show where the criminalists became the heroes. I just thought it had juice.â
While CSI did break new ground in procedural television and spawned countless imitators, it also had a dark side, which occasionally made for some tough working conditions. For Helgenberger, the constant late-night shoots got old pretty fast, so she amended her contract around season 5 to ensure that she never worked past midnight. She also had no patience for story lines that featured excessive violence against women. âI would speak up if I felt like there were too many women being exploited,â she says. âIt just seemed like there were a lot of young, beautiful women who were corpses.â There were plenty of perks at her job though, and Helgenberger particularly appreciated how the producers gave her plenty of say in Catherineâs backstory. âBilly [Petersen] was the one who never wanted to go home with the characters,â Helgenbeger remembers. âI insisted upon it. I was the one who had a daughter and the ex-husband.â She was equally thrilled when her bosses brought on Danson this season. âTedâs just a great guy,â says Helgenberger, grinning. âHe would have convinced me to stay if I had been really open to it, Heâs just so easy to work with.â (When asked what she thought about the Laurence Fishburne years, Helgenberger says the showâs subject matter became more bleak but that he was âa powerful actor.â)
The worry now is whether CSI can survive the loss of yet another fan favorite. (The drama is currently averaging 13.4 million viewers â a far cry from its heyday when Petersen was the star and the show drew in 26.6 million.) Eads, for one, has some concerns: âIt sucked when Billy left. I was almost mad at him. Come on, this is great, isnât it? I didnât see it the way he did. When I saw viewership drop from 19 million to 16 million, you learn how beloved some characters are. If we go down to 2 million with Marg going, what does that say about the rest of us?â Helgenberger tries not to worry about the fans â sheâs too busy feeling guilty about leaving the cast and crew â but sheâs confident that the CSI mothership will do just fine without her. âItâs funny because you find yourself having these discussions on the set,â says the actress, whoâs not opposed to returning to CSI for a cameo or doing another TV series down the line. âFifteen seasons feels like a nice round figure. Itâs kind of a milestone.â But, she adds wistfully, âit sure goes by in the blink of an eye.â
Marg Helgenberger: My 5 Favorite CSI Episodes
1) Pilot Viewers meet the graveyard-shift team, who see a rookie get shot after sheâs left alone at a crime scene. âIt kicked everything off.â
2) âLady Heatherâs Boxâ Catherine saves her daughter from a submerged car. âI had quite a bit to do in it,â says the star. âI enjoyed it.â
3) âWeeping Willowsâ Helgenbergerâs then husband Alan Rosenberg plays a murder suspect. âIt was very well written and well directed.â
4) âGrave Dangerâ Nick (George Eads) is buried alive in a two-parter directed by Quentin Tarantino. âQuentin is so sweet, and such a fan of CSI.â
5) âWillows in the Windâ Catherine says goodbye to her fellow CSIs. âIt was a no-acting-required kind of thing. It was really beautiful.â