Originally posted: September 20, 2006
Bound for home:
Serious “CSI” fans have one burning question regarding the
seventh-season premiere Thursday: Will the show delve further into the relationship
between Sara Sidle and Gil Grissom that was revealed in the final moments of
the CBS show’s Season 6 finale?
William Petersen was cagey on that topic in a recent interview; he’d
only allow that his character, Grissom, and Sidle (pictured at left) feel they
“have to protect” their relationship from the rest of the CSI team, lest news
of it cause problems at work.
On another topic, however, Petersen was more than forthcoming. At the end of
the season of “CSI” that kicks off at 8 p.m. Thursday (WBBM-Ch. 2), his
contract with CBS is up.
And Petersen wants to come home.
Home, for the Evanston-born actor, is the
“I’ve been talking to [artistic director] Dennis Zacek at
Zacek says he’d love to get the actor into one of his 2006-07 productions,
which will be staged at the company’s new home at the Biograph Theater on
“I’m trying to have something custom-made for him, but it’s in the making. It’s
not finished,” says Zacek, who adds that he hopes to have the script ready for
Petersen to read when the actor arrives in town for Victory Gardens’
season-opening gala Oct. 14.
“I’m not sure this means we won’t see him in any more movies or in any more TV
stuff, but I do think there’s a hunger to get back to the demands and the
purity and the risks of live theater,” Zacek adds.
CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler says she doesn’t want to think about,
let alone discuss, what “CSI” will do in its eighth season or beyond if
Petersen leaves or reduces his presence on the show.
Cooking up the key elements of the show’s seventh season -which will have a
recurring serial-killer theme, a new forensic psychologist who will “throw
Grissom off his game,” and the slowly developing relationship between Grissom
and Sidle - kept “CSI” producers busy enough, she notes.
“I’m so excited about this season - who knows what next year’s going to
bring? I really have no idea,” she says.
“CSI” without Grissom? “I can’t even imagine that,” Tassler says.
Petersen and his wife, Gina, bought a condo in downtown
In fact, to take some of the heat off his planned return to the
“There may be stuff I do [on `CSI’] next year. I just know that I want to do a
play in
“This” has been six years of long days as a very famous television actor, in a
show that became more successful than anyone involved in it ever dreamed.
As executive producer Carol Mendelsohn has said, CBS executives were reluctant
to give out the show’s very first ratings report - the numbers were so high, the execs thought Nielsen Media Research must have
gotten them wrong.
“CSI” has matured into a behemoth that has drawn an average of 25 million to 26
million viewers in the last four TV seasons. It was the No. 1 show from 2002 to
2005 (it was knocked off its perch by “American Idol” in the 2005-06 season), and it spawned not only a host of lesser imitators
but the spinoffs “CSI:
Petersen says many TV shows were offered to him over the years (CBS Corp. CEO
“Leslie [Moonves] had been asking him for 10 years,” Tassler notes), but the
actor “didn’t want to get locked down,” he says. “CSI” finally snagged him, he
says, thanks to the complexity of the role of Grissom, a shy, slyly funny
entomologist turned dogged crime-scene investigator.
“This was somebody that I was not like, and I was going to be able to learn
something,” Petersen says. “Because I thought, what if it goes seven years?
Everybody thinks it’ll go seven days, but what if it goes seven years? You
better have something that keeps you interested.”
Still, despite six years leading the ensemble on television’s top-rated
scripted show - plus a substantial career in films before “CSI” - Petersen says
he still considers himself a theater guy first and foremost.
“If you learned to play baseball first, that’s your sport,” said Petersen, a
die-hard Cubs fan. “That doesn’t mean you can’t play basketball and football,
but you’re always going to want to return to baseball.”
“I’ve been fortunate enough to grow up playing baseball and learn to play
basketball and football well enough, and be successful at it. Now it’s time to
go back to baseball. I feel like Michael
And Petersen’s return to
Zacek, who directed Petersen in that play, still remembers the decision
to cast the 25 year old actor; at first, he and Norris thought Petersen was
much to young for the role.
“The more we read, the more we liked him,” Zacek says. And Petersen adapted to
make himself look older: “He had to shave the side of
his head to give himself a receding hairline,” the director recalls.
Petersen went on to co-found
His portrayal of “In the Belly of the Beast” killer Jack Henry Abbott at Wisdom
Bridge Theatre “crosses the usual boundaries of `acting’ into an area of
experience I found staggering,” the Tribune’s former theater critic Richard
Christiansen wrote in 1983.
As Christiansen recalled in his 2002 book, “A Theater of Our Own: A History and
Memoir of 1,001 Nights in Chicago,” “Driving back to the office to file my
review after [`Beast’s] opening night, I had to pull over to the side of the
road and rest there for a few minutes in order to collect myself.”
“As a teacher, you’re not ever able to make anyone into an actor. God gives the
talent,” says Zacek, who first met Petersen three decades ago at an Evanston
Burger King, where the director was nursing a coffee.
Petersen somehow knew that Zacek was connected to the theater world, and he
introduced himself. “He said, `My name is Billy Petersen and I wondered if I
could sit down and talk to you. I’m thinking of being an actor and just
wondered what kind of advice you could give me,’” Zacek recalls.
A couple days later, Zacek stopped in for another coffee. Petersen was
there again. They talked again, and eventually Petersen began taking classes at
“Billy is someone who respects the intelligence of the audience, and that’s I
think a big key to the success that he’s experienced,” Zacek says.
“He’s an incredibly charismatic guy, and he’s also someone who’s not afraid of
taking risks,” Zacek says. “He has taken many a risk in many a show. He’s
extremely courageous as an actor, and also someone who is very kinetic and
physical in his work, as well as verbal. He’s got a lot going for him.”
And Petersen is nothing if not loyal. When
The lack of traps at
Petersen heard about the situation, and ended up putting up most of the money
for the construction of the traps. It was a sizable six-figure sum, Zacek says.
“It was artist to artist,” Zacek says of the gift. “It allows us to have a
flexibility we’ve never had before.” And it was, he jokes, “major payback for
time spent over coffee.”
Before Petersen gets back to
“Now he’s having to supervise every death encounter
that happens in
Grissom’s journey and his own have parallels, he says. Like Grissom, who
now supervises and mentors the Las Vegas CSI staff, Petersen feels a deep responsibility
to both the show’s fans and to the 200 people who work on “CSI.”
When Grissom comes across a body, Petersen explains, the investigator “can say
to himself, `I didn’t have anything to do with this, but I want to make sure
that somebody explains it.’ That’s the heroic part, and that’s the part that
can keep him doing it.
“And it’s kind of the same way for me as an actor in the show. You know, yeah,
a lot of the doing of it is tedious and routine and it’s not the new play from
But will there be closure -or at least more details - for fans who want to know
more about the Grissom-Sidle romance? It sounds as though the show is going to
take its time on that front (more on that here).
“I think they’ve been very careful, because it’s obviously a very dicey
situation at work if this was a relationship that was uncovered,” Petersen
says. “And yet, they found themselves together on some levels. We don’t know
what levels for sure, you know?”
“But they obviously always have been interested in each other. And there’s an
intimacy there. We just thought it was time for the audience to see that there
is an intimacy there.”
Some fans theorize the couple have been together since Sidle arrived in the
second episode of the series (the characters had known each other before either
arrived in Vegas). And though Petersen and Jorja Fox, who plays Sidle, have
ideas about when the romance began, they’re not sharing their theories.
“If you want a lot of the audience to come with you and be part of the journey,
then you have to trust the creators to take you there,” Petersen notes. “And if
I say, `This is what happened and this is where it’s been and this is where
it’s going,’ then [viewers might] watch `Grey’s Anatomy’!”
In any case, Naren Shankar, one of the show’s executive producers, told the
Tribune in July that Grissom and Sidle’s pairing is part of an complicated
emotional journey for the CSI supervisor (more on that here).
“What do you do when something you’ve kept at bay for the longest time, which
is really the sadness and the misery of a certain part of this job, actually
gets through your defenses?” Shankar said.
“Part of what we we’re doing with Grissom and Sara being together is, here’s a
guy who for the first time in maybe his life is reaching out to another human
being,” he noted.
Still, especially given the Thursday matchup with last season’s No. 5 show, the
romance has given “CSI” an unusual amount of buzz for a show going into its
seventh season.
“I don’t know that I’m surprised,” says Tassler, when asked about the
pre-season “CSI” chatter. “I’m relieved,” she says, unleashing a full-throated
chuckle.
And despite their public lack of concern over getting “dinged” by “Grey’s Anatomy”
when the two dramas go up against each other on Thursdays this fall, CBS
executives must be at least a little nervous about whether the cornerstone of
their crime-procedural empire will take a serious hit from ABC’s red-hot doctor
drama.
Petersen, for his part, says he doesn’t think about the threat from ABC’s sexy
doctors. But he is worried about competition from one man. One
bald man. On NBC.
“I think Grissom watches `Deal or No Deal,’” Petersen said. “I’m a lot more
worried about that show than `Grey’s Anatomy.’.”
Below is a transcript of my conversation
with Petersen.
So what are you plans for next year?
“I haven’t been able to do a play since this thing started. I’m going to
do a play oddly enough in
“I’ve been talking to Dennis Zajek at
Is this your last year on “CSI”?
“There may be stuff I do next year, I just know
that I want to do a play in
Is it that the show has gone much longer
than you expected?
“No, no, it’s just that if you learned to play baseball first, that’s
your sport. That doesn’t mean you can’t play basketball and football, but
you’re always going to want to return to baseball.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to grow up playing baseball and learn to
play basketball and football well enough, and be successful at it. Now it’s
time to go back to baseball. I feel like Michael Jordan [when he said,] ‘You
know, I could have played baseball too. So I think I’m going to leave the Bulls
and go play baseball.’ Even if it’s Triple A. He
didn’t care.”
So next year you see yourself as not being
in every episode?
“Yes. I do [see it that way]. I like to think I’d get some time to do a
play in
"And I’m doing that kind of because it takes a little bit of the
heat off of going back to [do a play in]
What’s the play in
“It’s called ‘Dublin Carol,’ it takes place in
You could run that forever in
“Except it’s a Christmas play [laughs].”
Yeah, but any play about the Irish runs
seems to run forever.
“Well, if we do well in
What kind of play are you looking for,
when you return here next year?
“I’m trying to work out something with Dennis Zajek at the Victory
Gardens, which is where I first got my Equity card 26 years ago. So we’re trying
to find a play that works for him and for me and for the theater. We’re looking
at something next summer. It’s hard, because he does new plays, often by new
playwrights. So we’re trying to find something that makes sense for all of us.
"We will find something, you know, whether it’s this summer or the
following year or whatever. But that’s who I’m working with, the
I wanted to talk to you about the finale
from last season, there was such a hue and cry over it…
“Yeah? ’Cause
Brass got shot?”
Yeah, of course. It was all about Brass.
“Well, that’s how I felt, anyway. It was all about Brass.”
Indeed, for a lot of fans that was a big
deal. But as far as your character and that of Jorja Fox hooking up, fan
reaction sort of went off the chart, especially online. Were you aware of all
that?
“I pretty much stay unaware. I gave my computer away 6 years ago. I
don’t go on the [sites], I just don’t do any of that
stuff. I don’t go on the internet. I don’t watch the shows, really, any more.
“The fact of the matter is, is that I believe
that we [Grissom and Sara Sidle] have had a relationship since I met her before
the series started. The characters, Grissom and Sara met [before the start of the show]. After the pilot, we bring in Jorja to
investigate what happened to the gal that got killed in the pilot.
“Obviously there was some sort of mentor-protégé relationship that was
developed at the very beginning, that Grissom was tenuous about and has been
and whatnot. I don’t know exactly when this thing started.
“All the scene was last year was, the audience gets to look through the
keyhole for a minute, and go, ‘Oh, [these characters] go home.’ I never thought
this was a show that should go home with the characters much. Because [co-workers] don’t at work, much. You know, you go
to work at the paper, everybody’s got their lives and there’s a lot of stuff
that goes on at the paper, but that doesn’t mean you bring it all home and
everybody knows what everyone did last weekend. That’s like life.
“I think they’ve been very careful, because it’s obviously a very dicey
situation at work if this was a relationship that was uncovered. And yet, they
found themselves together on some levels. We don’t know what levels for sure,
you know?
“But they obviously always have been interested in each other. And
there’s an intimacy there. We just thought it was time for the audience to see
that there is an intimacy there. We don’t know what it is, I don’t think. I
mean, I don’t think anyone knows exactly what’s going on.”
So you don’t have a fixed idea in your
mind of how long they’ve been together?
“Oh, I do, but I don’t know that the people who are perceiving
it do [know], you know? Sara and Grissom know. You know what I mean? And
they’ve been very careful to avoid anyone else knowing.”
Do you think they’ve been together since
she got to Vegas, or do you not want to say when you think this happened?
“Well, does it matter, really?’
Honestly, I would have said, for me
personally, no, it doesn’t matter, but for readers and fans and people who’ve
emailed me, they’ve really wanted to know.
“But if you invite all your friends to a barbecue and this couple shows
up together, don’t you go, ‘Hey, are they together? We know they’re friends?
What exactly is it?’ Jorja and I have our ideas about it as actors, but again,
the show needs to spool this out. If we’d gotten into this relationship in the
second or third year of the show, we’d be done now.
“If you want a lot of the audience to come with you and be part of the
journey, then you have to trust the creators to
take you there. And if I say, this is what happened and this is where it’s been
and this is where it’s going, then, [the audience might] watch ‘Grey’s
Anatomy’!
“I’ll give you an example – TV Guide desperately wanted to do a cover of
me and Jorja, for the premiere week. I was a little against it, but then we
decided we’d do it, but we wouldn’t do it as if there was some sort of other
thing beyond what we do [for a living].
“Our show’s about puzzles, about solving puzzles. And this is one of
those puzzles that’s in the show. We get to solve it.
Hopefully, like the show, we will solve the puzzle. That doesn’t mean we’re
going to solve it today.”
But the two characters seem to have
chemistry, as well as an intellectual friendship.
“Yeah, absolutely. When I was younger, when I was 20, I read a book by Herman Hesse called
‘Narcissus and Goldmund.’ It’s a fabulous study of a mentor protégé
relationship. As we grow older, there’s a part of us that wants to stay young,
and there’s a part of us that is very intrigued with passing that on and
getting that back. It’s the classic mentor-protégé relationship where the
protégé can surpass the mentor, and then what do you do?
“And I think that’s what’s interesting to me, and always has been, which
is why I never wanted the relationship to go away. I wanted the, I think Jorja
and I both wanted this thing, we know we have chemistry and we know we can play
off it and we enjoy it. It’s just like in any relationship, if you run into
somebody where that feels right for, you don’t want to give it up, so you do things to protect it.
“Yet you know you’re on a fine line. It’s a fine line between, how do I
keep this enticing and not ruin it? And I think that’s where Grissom and Sara
are, that fine line that you walk at some point, you know, how do you progress
it, what do we do? They have a huge challenge, which Grissom sometimes tried to
bail out of and Sara tried to bail out of. There were different moments over
the years where it was like, yeeesh.
“And nobody in CSI knows. But do they hear something, do the see
something, do they suspect something? Maybe. As the audience did. The difference is,
the only thing that’s happened is that the audience happened to see them at
home. And so now they’re going to have to deal with what they saw. And we have
to deal with making sure they don’t see too much, too. Because
otherwise we’re a different show.”
That’s what some fans seem to be concerned
about. I like when shows bring in the characters’ personal lives, but depending
on what kind of show it is, it can be a tricky
balancing act.
“Absolutely. And I don’t think our show works on that level. But you cannot deny the
chemistry. The one thing that separates ‘CSI,’ I feel, and this personal, this
is Billy Petersen talking, is that there is chemistry throughout the whole
cast. And the show was created around that chemistry. So you’re not going to
deny the chemistry. And that leads to stuff.
“But when we go too far [afield] in terms of personal lives, [the
reaction may be] who cares? When you go to work, you don’t want to hear too
much about somebody’s life, because what am I supposed to do with that? What am
I supposed to with all your personal baggage. [It’s
like], ‘I got a lot to do today, I don’t need to do
this.’
“I think that we didn’t show too much at the end of last season. And
what did we show? Did we show anything? No. We know that they’re intimate. But
they may be intimate in the way that a married couple is intimate. That they’ve already done all that other stuff and now they just
hang out and talk about what they did today.”
And he really needs that, because as
you’ve said and the producers have said, Grissom wants everyone to think his
head is bigger than his heart, but that’s not really the case. Everything does
affect him on some level.
“Yes, absolutely. He wouldn’t be as good at what he does if he didn’t have that. And now
he’s trying to figure out where to place it. And it’s very confusing for a
person who’s spent their life… and this is true of anybody.
“It’s true of an actor. You can live your life doing something and
knowing this is how you have to do it, and this is how you have to be to do it.
And then you find yourself at a certain age, going, God, all the effort I have
to put in to try to be this person. And at the same time, my heart’s breaking.
“He doesn’t know. Who does? We can say that Grissom doesn’t know [about
life] because he’s weird, or because he’s an
entomologist and he’s weird. But it’s not that, he’s just a regular person who
still doesn’t know. You can be in any marriage or relationship this or that…
you don’t know. He’s just trying to figure it out.
“At the end of the day, the job they do is what they do, is who they
are. [He] doesn’t say, ‘I’m Sara Sidle’s boyfriend,’ [he] says ‘I’m the
supervisor of the CSI graveyard shift.’ What else do you do? ‘I ride rollercoasters.’
What else? ‘I have a bug collection.’ What else? ‘Sometimes I go to this
friend’s house late at night and talk to her.’”
[Executive producer] Naren [Shankar] said something interesting, that
after a while, for a thinking feeling compassionate person, what you do and see
in this job has got to sink in and affect you. Does Grissom face that this
season?
“I think so. I think there are certain things that are in place this
year, it’s also a buildup of time. Doesn’t everybody in every job… I mean,
don’t I say, I could be in regional theater having a lovely time, spending the
day wandering around town then going at night for two hours and doing a play,
without a whole lot of terrible baggage or going into the grocery story and
being recognized by everybody? … At some point [a writer might] go, when am I
going to get to that book, or [an actor might say] when am I going to do
‘Lear’?
“In Grissom’s case, it’s like, ‘Have I gone to far away from why I got
into this to begin with? Why I got into it is the study of insects. I loved
that little piece of life, where I could put a ranch inside a glass case and
watch it grow. And now all I do is autopsies. And find people in horrible,
misshapen conditions.’ At some point, you go, ‘The whole reason I loved this
when I was a kid was because I loved to follow the ants to see where they went
all day long.’
“And now he’s having to supervise every death
encounter that happens in
Why?
“I mean, the first was harder on some level, physically, but the
seventh, there’s more responsibility to it. You have a much bigger audience
that you have to deal with and you have to feel some responsibility to it. I
mean, that’s the deal. For all of us. That’s all I’m
trying to do anyway, is just say, this guy has a specific talent that’s
different from a lot of people’s, But he’s the same person. He’s somebody’s
who’s just trying desperately not found out. [He’s just saying,] God, can I
keep this up?
“I think that [desire to find the creative spark that started it all] is
true of anybody in any sort of creative environment, whether it’s writing or
acting or music or crime solving. The interesting thing about Grissom is that
he believes he’s being creative when he gets the call. … At some point, it
becomes, are you interested in getting that call, or do you hope it goes to
somebody else?”
It’s just got to be tiring.
“Yeah, it’s tiring. Everybody’s job is tiring at some point. And believe
me, I’m a lot different at 53 than I was at 40. At 40, I wouldn’t have done a
TV series.”
Why not?
“They kept sending them to me, but I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want to
get locked down. But this is what we do in the world, is we get locked down. We
do what we do, and we do what we’re good at.
“And then you go, ‘Oh man. This is a little snakier than I wanted it to
be, you know?’ I didn’t want to know everything about this person, everything
about that. I didn’t want the responsibility of everybody else’s children.
That’s a huge thing. When you have the responsibility.
I don’t know how corporate executives do it, when they fire a whole division.
“The thing that keeps me at it is, we’re doing a series and there’s 200
people working on the show and they all have kids. We can’t let the show
collapse, what are these guys gonna do? How are those kids gonna go to high
school?”
And how you face
up to that kind of real responsibility in life, that’s the measure of who you
are.
“That’s the heroic aspect in life that’s interesting to me. And that’s
what’s interesting to me in terms of ‘CSI’ or anything else in life. It’s like, how do you handle [something], when it becomes
really a pain in the ass, what are you going to sacrifice to do this because
it’s good for somebody else?
“And I’m attuned to not only the people who work on the show but the
people who watch the show, and I want to make sure that it’s okay for them. I
can’t control everything, and for me personally, like Grissom, I might have
left two years ago, or four years ago, or I might not have ever done it.
“But at some point, you say, you know what, this is a huge responsibility.
I’m going to do this. And that’s what makes these characters in ‘CSI’ heroic –
not that they are carrying guns and shooting guys and saving lives. They’re not
saving lives. They’re defining lives.
“And at some point it’s heroic, because they keep going there. And at
some point, you will see the struggle of what it takes to go there.
“The part that is healing for Grissom is when he’s in the autopsy room
with Robbins. There’s a certain part where you go, OK, this person’s not here
any more. We can talk about him, we can operate on him. It’s very obvious to me
that [at a certain point] the person is gone.
“I always thought the show would work, because at the beginning of the
show, the person is gone. It’s not like where you get to know the person
through the course of the show and then you kill the person. That would be
horrible. I don’t want to do that show. But this show, the person is gone to
begin with and then we try and fill in that person’s life. That’s the saving
grace.
“That’s the one thing that they can do, that Grissom can say to himself,
I didn’t have anything to do with this, but I want to make sure that somebody
explains it. That’s the heroic part, and that’s the part that can keep him
doing it.
“And its kind of the same way for me as an
actor in the show. You know, yeah, a lot of the doing of it is tedious and
routine and it’s not the new play from
What part of playing Grissom do you enjoy
playing the most?
“The mere fact that he knows something
about science, which I know nothing about.
I’ve learned a lot from Grissom. That was the point of doing this as opposed to
doing a cop or a lawyer or a ex-husband who’s got
kids. There were a million different things that they came to [me] for.
“This was somebody that I was not like, and I was going to be able to
learn something. Because I thought, what if it goes seven years? Everybody
thinks it’ll go seven days, but what if it goes seven years? You better have
something that keeps you interested. And this was something different from me.
He’s an interesting guy.
“He becomes a huge test for Sara Sidle. You talk about trying to have a
relationship with a man – Sara has her work cut out for her. This is a complex
man that she’s trying to figure out how to deal with, so of course it takes all
kinds of fits and starts. Don’t you think?”
But she seems very persistent. She doesn’t
give up.
“And that’s what he loves about her. She’s a bulldog. And he always saw
that in her. And he always knew that subconsciously the only person the only
person who’d be able to give him a second look is someone who’s not willing to
take the first look for granted.”
But he’s guarded that way. He doesn’t want
to just put himself out there.
“Totally.
And she and he, like everybody else, has all kinds of
deeper dimensions and deeper secrets and problems and crises and tragedies that
infuse their lives. And I don’t know that we ever know. My parents were married
for 74 years before they passed away. And I don’t know how much you know after
all of that, you know?
“The interesting thing about them is that they’re willing to protect it.
Even though they don’t know what they have, or whether they have anything. Even
in their doubts and their fears, they are still protective of each other. Which is why nobody knows about it. Which
is why there was just a peek through the keyhole at the end of last season.”
Is part of why the
protect it because it’s a very tender thing and they both don’t have
much intimacy in their lives?
“Absolutely, they could bleed to death. They could bleed to death.
They’re like hemophiliacs, truly. They don’t have relationships,
they don’t know anything about it. And that’s interesting to me, that’s the Garden of Eden. It’s Adam and Eve.
“If somebody comes along and despoils this garden, it’s all going to get
really rough for everybody else. Which is what happened in the garden of Eden [laughs]. If that damn snake didn’t show up,
we could be having a nice cocktail in a hammock on a Hawaiian shore. But the
serpent showed up and screwed the whole deal up and now we’re all struggling.”
So I have to ask, what’s your thought on
the competition with “Grey’s Anatomy”?
“You know, I don’t know much about that. I don’t have much of a chance
to watch any television, except for sports. I only watch the Cubs or the Bears.
I don’t program CBS or ABC, so I don’t know much. I had a friend that was a
costume designer on the show the first year, so I know what she thinks about
the show.
“I wish them well. I’m sure it’s a good show, or it wouldn’t have all
this notoriety or whatever. But I really don’t know anything about it. I’m
trying to be honest, it really doesn’t have anything
to do with me, in my day. I can’t go, ‘OK, what are we going to do this week
because we’re up against “Grey’s Anatomy”’?”
“No, we do our show and they do their show – you know, they’re not
suddenly going to do some ‘CSI’ stuff.
“I know that we started out Friday nights and CBS moves us to Thursday
to go after ‘ER’ and ‘Will and Grace’ and all that stuff, with ‘Survivor.’ That
was six years ago. We were going, ‘Why do we have to do this? Why do we have to
go up against them? We were doing fine on Friday nights.’ They did that because
they want to beat the other guy.
“So ABC is going, and oddly enough it’s [ABC head] Steve McPherson who
was at Disney and an executive on our show when we created it, he’s saying,
‘We’re going to get those guys.’
“I mean, what kind of shelf life is anybody going to have in this deal?
I don’t feel our audience is going to leave us for ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ and I
don’t think ‘Grey’s Anatomy’s’ audience is going to not follow them to Thursday
nights. It’s what Thursday nights are, these people [at the networks] like to
compete.
“Really, at the end of the day, we [on the shows] don’t compete. I’m not
going to compete with Patrick Dempsey. He doesn’t want that and I don’t want
that. … All we do is try to figure out how to shoot the day. I hope that there’s
room for, and I think there is, both of us at 9 o’clock.
“My biggest concern, quite frankly, is Howie Mandel. Quite frankly, it’s
my favorite show on TV. I have two shows I like on TV, ‘Rock Star: Supernova,’
with Tommy Lee and Dilana, and Howie Mandel.”
Are you kidding about Howie
Mandel?
“Oh no.
[A journalist] asked me, ‘If Grissom could end up on one other TV show in
“At the end of the day, Grissom’s like, ‘Wait a minute,
that guy’s bald, and he has 30 girls, and they all have his briefcase?
How come he got that show? I could do that show! I could wear the tux, shave my
head.’ I think Grissom watches ‘Deal or No Deal.’ I’m a lot more worried about
that show than ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’”
Well, maybe there’s room for all three of
you.
"Yeah well, we’ll hope. Nonetheless, I’ll be watching Howie."
Photos: Petersen and Jorja
Fox in "CSI's" Season 6 finale, a poster
for Petersen's appearance in "Dillinger," Petersen in the '70s,
Petersen as Grissom on "CSI" and
Petersen in "Flyovers" at