A message from a higher power, exploding gas tanks, and making whoopee with Whoopi. All
the evidence indicates that it hasn't always been smooth sailing for the cast of "CSI."
William Petersen played perhaps the most recognizable morgue employee on "CSI:
Crime Scene Investigation," the alliteratively-named Gil Grissom.
He starred on "CSI" from the show's first episode in 2000 up through 2009,
when he decided to step away. He explained the decision to walk away to CNN, saying -
"It's 'CSI' — they pay me a lot of money, and I don't have to work very hard anymore. I've got
it all figured out. And I just realized, God, as an artist, I'm going to atrophy."
Still, though, Grissom returned when "CSI" decided to return as "CSI: Vegas" — and Petersen told
Outsider that returning to the character that made him famous was as natural as could be, saying -
"It's like riding a bicycle, you know?"
Back in 2004, Petersen told Playboy about a frightening incident early in
his career that nearly sent him to the morgue himself,
after an on-set accident left him bleeding and blacked-out, recalling -
"I could hear the doctors working on me, saying that they had lost my vital signs. I was on the
'All That Jazz' escalator with a long tunnel and a lot of white light. Then I specifically
remember a dominant male voice saying, 'It's not your time. Get off the escalator."
The experience, Petersen says, reassured him that there is life after death,
though he said most people he's told about the near-death experience didn't believe him.
"We're genetically hard-wired to believe living forces that we cannot see."
Ted Danson joined the cast of "CSI" in its twelfth season,
playing new team leader D.B. Russell for three seasons before jumping ship to "CSI:
Cyber" when the flagship show ended. This meant that Danson led the cast during the
show's 300th episode, and he told The Killing Times that the show was still on the air and
was still successful because it was still as good as it was when it began, reflecting -
"It's a really tight ship and it's really well done and people still are enjoying
it all around the world. So I am really, really, really proud to be part of this show."
Before he was a crime scene investigator, Danson was a "Cheers" vet who came from a
troubled tabloid past. When his first wife, Casey Coates, gave birth to their first child,
she experienced a stroke that resulted in the left side of her body being paralyzed.
Danson left acting for a while to care for her, telling People -
"It was horrifying. But after you get over the shock,
you roll up your sleeves and work at getting things better."
Though he supported her for a while, Danson ultimately had a highly-publicized affair
with actor and comedian Whoopi Goldberg, ending his marriage to Coates. He admitted to People -
"We're adjusting to the fact that we aren't the same people we were before this happened."
Robert David Hall played Dr. Al Robbins for an astounding 328 episodes of "CSI," starting
off as a recurring character before becoming a regular. Speaking with the CSI Files fansite,
Hall joked that although his coroner character loves his job,
he kept it at the whim of "CSI's" writers and producers, later clarifying -
"The actor, RDH, loves going to work and enjoys the cast, crew,
and staff so much, he hopes we go twenty seasons."
That was not to be the case, but the actor did bring Doc Robbins back for "CSI:
Immortality," the TV movie that closed out the series.
Like his character, Hall is a double amputee in real life, and he uses prosthetic legs. He lost
his legs in a car accident involving a semi truck that jumped a highway median, crushing the actor.
"I was driving a little foreign car and the guy ran right over me,
and I should've been dead but I survived."
As he recalled in an interview with Ability Magazine -
"I knew I was injured, but I didn't know quite where I was. I figured something
really horrible had happened, and then my gas tank exploded."
The strength he gained from his tragedy helped him face the pressures of the
entertainment industry head-on. He recalled a conversation in an interview with AARP
where someone told him about being afraid of a certain casting director who they
thought was tough. Hall recalled saying - "I've always thought, 'I was burned over 60
percent of my body and lost two legs. How bad can a casting director be compared to that?'"
Elisabeth Shue played Julie Finlay, the Assistant Night Shift Supervisor
in the Las Vegas Crime Lab, on "CSI" for four seasons of the iconic show between
2012 and 2015. The year she joined the show, she told The Columbus Dispatch -
"I'm very grateful to be working. I'm always grateful. And the older you get,
you get more grateful and appreciative."
Shue first got famous in the 80s, starring in films like the "Back to the Future" sequels,
"The Karate Kid," and "Adventures in Babysitting."
The actor experienced a tragedy in the late 80s, when her older brother Will died in
a shocking accident resulting from a fall from a tire swing. According to "Healing:
Advice for Recovering Your Inner Strength and Spirit from the World," Elisabeth witnessed
her brother's death, and for a long time she struggled to deal with the loss, reflecting -
"What happened to Will taught me that human beings
are fragile. His death taught me not to be afraid anymore of who I was."
She also recalled attending therapy to help her deal with the situation,
which she now considers, quote, "the first huge step [I took] in my life."
Elisabeth and her surviving brother, Andrew, turned their pain into art with the release
of 2007 film "Gracie," which was based on their lives and their relationship with their brother.
Marg Helgenberger is one of the most recognizable actors on "CSI," having
led the show for its first twelve seasons as Catherine Willows before stepping back,
telling The Hollywood Reporter at the time -
"I instinctively felt it was time to end that chapter of my career. I'm 53 now,
and I feel like I'm still young enough to switch it up."
She did, however, continue to appear sporadically throughout
the rest of the show's original run, and according to Deadline,
she will bring Catherine back on the rebooted "CSI: Vegas" in 2022.
Off-screen, the actor has been a fierce advocate for breast cancer awareness since learning that
her mother was sick; the star turned to advocacy as a way to heal, as she recalled to NBC News -
"To this day, I remember exactly how I felt when she told me,
and how her strength and determination to beat this disease was incredibly empowering."
Her mother's diagnosis affected everyone in the Helgenberger clan;
the "CSI" star told SurvivorNet that she watched her father break down over the news, saying -
"He was obviously just distraught and terrified that he was going to lose
the love of his life and the mother of his children. […] It was brutal."
Her mother survived several years with the disease but eventually passed away in 2021.
Laurence Fishburne is one of the biggest stars to ever join the cast of "CSI." After playing
Morpheus in "The Matrix" and before his role as Pops on "Black-ish," Fishburne recurred on
"CSI" for 61 episodes between 2008 and 2011. His role as Raymond Langston, a CSI at the
Vegas Crime Lab, was actually Fisburne's first long-term experience on television,
which he told Deadline was a good chance to expand his knowledge of entertainment. He said -
"It was also an opportunity for me to learn, as a producer, the television business a little better,
because I was certainly unfamiliar with the workings of television from the business side."
He added that his production company got "Black-ish" off
the ground when he left the crime drama.
In his personal life, Fishburne and his wife Gina Torres were together for many years,
seeming like one of Hollywood's most stable couples for fourteen years,
even starring together on "Hannibal." However, they tragically split in 2017, although Torres
insisted that the breakdown of their marriage was as good-natured as could be, telling Us Weekly -
"There are no bad guys here. Only a love story
with a different ending than either one of us had expected."
Fisburne officially filed for divorce several months later,
and according to Radar, everything was finalized the following year.
Gary Dourdan's "CSI" character Warrick Brown was part of the crew at the Vegas Crime Lab for the
show's first eight seasons. However, according to TV Guide, failed contract negotiations led
to the end of Dourdan's time on the show, and Warrick was killed off in the Season 8 finale.
Though you might think eight seasons on a highly-successful network show would be
enough to set an actor up for life, it seems that Dourdan had not been saving his money.
"20 bucks - by the end of the shift, I'm the man."
"Is there anything you won't bet on?"
"Nah."
Within a few years of departing "CSI," after a string of legal troubles, TMZ reported
that the actor filed for bankruptcy. According to documents filed in court,
Dourdan claimed that his disposable income added up to a mere $321 a month after all
of his bills were paid. According to a Page Six report, the actor apparently blamed his
lack of funds on his character's death, meaning that he couldn't return to the show to recoup
the fame and wealth that had come with the part for his first few years on television.
Thankfully, he seems to have turned his career around;
Dourdan had recurring roles throughout the 2010s on shows like "Being Mary Jane" and,
more recently, he starred in the movie 'Redemption Day.'