Petersen: 'CSI' Won't Become A Soap

Don't expect the employees of the Las Vegas crime lab to start locking lips with each other any time soon. That's the message from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation star and co-executive producer William Petersen (Gil Grissom), who believes less is more when it comes to characterisation.

"Since the start, we wanted to make sure the show didn't tilt over into a soap thing," Petersen told Gillian Cumming in Brisbane's Sunday Mail TV Guide lift-out. Information on the regular characters will be doled out little by little in order to keep audiences guessing and make sure the spotlight stays on the science.

"If the show does go eight or nine years, if we do stuff in year two or three, what are going to do in year five or six? A lot of time shows will do something to get ratings and they'll have some big moment between two characters where they kiss, then you're stuck and [the writers] never know what to do with them."

Perhaps the most enigmatic member of the Las Vegas crime lab is Gil Grissom himself, and Petersen wouldn't have it any other way. "I like that, and that's intentional. I also think it's within the character of Grissom. It had less to do with me than it has to do with me believing what Grissom wants, which is, he's not somebody who's comfortable having a beer with his guys after work or knowing that this gal in the office likes him."

That doesn't mean the night shift supervisor, who will be sporting a beard in season four, is a completely blank slate. Regular CSI viewers are well acquainted with Grissom's fondness for bugs and roller coasters, not to mention the fact that he is slowing going deaf. "Grissom comes from a place where we know he had a deaf mother, he was raised in a silent household, on some level, had a father who potentially was not around and he learned what he knew by himself in the back yard, with bugs and animals. He's not comfortable being a supervisor and that's his problem."

Grissom's inner conflict is what makes the character resonate with viewers, according to Petersen. "This is a conflicted individual, that's all I want, because that's true and that's normal."

The complete interview, in which Petersen also talked about the teamwork that goes on behind the scenes of CSI, is available in the TV Guide lift-out of Brisbane's Sunday Mail.

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