Mystery woman

Marg Helgenberger likes to get to the bottom of things on C.S.I.

By Alison McMillan
The Vancouver Sun TV Times – February 9-15, 2001

When is a shoelace not just a shoelace? When the way it’s tied suddenly points the detectives of C.S.l.: Crime Scene Investigation in the direction of a killer.

Amid a TV season filled with mediocrity and failure, CBS’s C.S.I. has turned into the sleeper hit of the year. It consistently attracts about 10 million viewers per week in the United States and was recently added to CTV’s prime-time lineup. The show was also up for a Golden Globe award as best TV drama series.

Not bad for a show that was initially supposed to need a strong lead-in by The Fugitive on Friday nights to be a success.

It didn’t turn out that way. While The Fugitive continues to struggle, C.S.I. is gaining ground. In fact, CBS is now using C.S.I. to anchor its Thursday-night lineup, slotting the drama series right behind Survivor: The Australian Outback in order to do some serious battle with NBC’s lineup of sitcoms.

C.S.I. details the exploits of a team of Las Vegas crime scene investigators. The subject matter is intriguing, the dialogue is interesting and the cast is an appealing, eclectic group.

C.S.I.‘s success isn’t a total surprise to co-star Marg Helgenberger – the flame-haired beauty who TV viewers will always remember as K.C. Koloski, the savvy prostitute on the Vietnam drama, China Beach, which ran from 1988 to ’91.

“I thought it [C.S.I.] had a strong chance,” Helgenberger says. “I thought it was provocative. I thought it was stylish and I thought the characters were interesting. I thought it was a fresh approach to crime-solving and that’s what everybody seems to be responding to.”

Leading the team in the C.S.I. forensics lab is handsome actor William Petersen, best known for the 1985 movie hit, To Live and Die in L.A. He plays Gil Grissom, the team’s fastidious, obsessive lead investigator. Helgenberger co-stars as Catherine Willows, a former exotic dancer who is not only an investigator, but also Grissom’s foil.

“There’s an interesting dynamic between them because he’s so cerebral and she’s so intuitive,” says Helgenberger. “And there’s a hell of a lot of history there. We’re the senior members of the team and my character came from such a different world.”

Willows is a single mother, and Helgenberger says that many women will be able to relate to her character’s struggle to manage family and career. “Just trying to juggle being a mother and having a career is a challenge,” she says. “I can only imagine what it must be like for a single mother – especially for a woman who’s working that job and is on the graveyard shift. If a homicide happens at the end of a shift, she doesn’t go home. She just rolls into another shift.”

Still, Helgenberger says Catherine is a fun character to play. “She’s pretty upbeat, and she’s sexy and sassy and smart. And she seems to get along really well with people – whereas Grissom gets along with corpses.”

Offscreen, Helgenberger is married to actor Alan Rosenberg (Cybill, Chicago Hope), with whom she has a son. Although the actress received acclaim for a supporting role opposite Julia Roberts in Erin Brokovich, people still largely recognize Helgenberger from her Emmy Award-winning turn on China Beach.

“People who liked that show, loved that show and were devoted to it,” she reflects. “And that character, KC, they really dug, because she was just so bad-ass. And she was great to play – there was just so much going on with her.”

There’s lots going on with C.S.l., too. The series has dealt with headline-making subjects such as the consequences of air rage. But some of C.S.I.‘s more bugs-and-body-parts-laden scenes have led to suggestions that the show is too gory.

One of Helgenberger’s favourite episodes deals with a case in which an elderly African-American man claims responsibility for a car accident involving his grandson in order to spare the boy from jail. “I like the episodes that involve ethics, like the one with the boy and his grandfather,” she says. “[Catherine] was willing to let that slide.”

“I like those moral dilemmas. I like the episodes with ambiguity where [she] doesn’t always do the right thing. I like having her emotional life reflected in how she solves crime.”     ♦