Online Only – The full interview with CSI’s William Petersen
IT IS very easy to miss the star and executive producer of popular TV forensics drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, William Petersen. For one thing, his hair is a whiter shade of pale, he’s lost his familiar goatee and, unlike the serious head of the forensics department he plays in CSI, he’s smiling.
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But despite being the star of one of America’s highest-rated shows, Petersen has none of that Hollywood superstar-ooh-I’m-so-famous persona, and appears to hate the hullabaloo that goes …

In January, William Petersen ended his almost-nine-year run as Gil Grissom on the hit series CSI. Since last year’s announcement of his departure, the Evanston native has returned to his first professional home: the Chicago stage. In December, he became a Steppenwolf ensemble member. Now, in David Harrower’s play Blackbird at Victory Gardens, Petersen stars as a 55-year-old man who meets a 27-year-old woman—15 years after their sexual encounter.
Time Out Chicago: The play doesn’t judge these people: Your character didn’t simply molest the young girl. Was that part of …

With his final CSI episode set to air Jan. 15, William Petersen — who has played the reclusive Gil Grissom for the past nine years — says he isn’t sad about saying bye to the CBS show.
“I won’t miss Grissom,” the actor, 55, tells Entertainment Weekly of the show, which averages 21.3 million viewers per week. “It was a complete life for me that’s reached its end, and it’s reached it in the right way, I think. So I won’t miss Grissom. And I hope that the audience won’t miss …