Fishburne Is 'Loving It'

It's a good place to be.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation's newest star, Laurence Fishburne (Dr Raymond Langston), stopped by Tavis Smiley's PBS talk show earlier this month. "I'm loving it. I was so sort of surprised that the whole thing came my way," Fishburne told Smiley. "I met with two of the writer-producers on the show and they gave me some episodes to watch, and I was so blown away by the quality of the writing and the production and the acting and the storytelling of it."

"I had never seen the show before," Fishburne continued, "but I was really impressed with it. And I felt like the tone of what they do was right inside the tone of a lot of the work that I do. It was really intelligent and thoughtful and mysterious and fun and you kind of learn some stuff. So I thought wow, I could be involved in this and have a good time."

Smiley asked Fishburne if doing television was "stepping down" for an actor of his stature. "I don't think so at all," Fishburne explained. "I feel like the quality of the writing is first-rate, the quality of the storytelling is first-rate, the quality of the visuals is first-rate. It's all about the material, to quote Jerry Bruckheimer. So acting is acting, whether you're doing it on stage or on film or on television or on radio or live." He went on to say, "I feel like I'm extremely blessed to have this opportunity. This is an opportunity for me to engage with an audience on a regular basis in a way that I haven't had the opportunity to do it before, so I'm extremely excited and blessed and happy about it."

Fishburne said that Gil Grissom (William Petersen) is "irreplaceable" on CSI, so he has to bring something different that will fit with the established series. "What I offer and what I bring is a kind of intelligence and a kind of thoughtfulness and a kind of authority, I think, that is well-matched to the tone of the show," Fishburne shared. "And so I hope to be able to come and bring those things and to service the show in that way, to be the intellectual center of the show in a way that's similar to the way that Grissom was the intellectual center of the show."

Despite taking Petersen's place as the lead actor in the series, Fishburne's character is the low man on the Las Vegas Crime Lab totem pole. "He has to start at the bottom," the actor explained. "So it's almost like the audience goes back to the beginning to sort of learn the steps that it takes to become a really, really proficient CSI."

The schedule Fishburne follows while filming CSI is "perfect" for his life right now, he revealed. "My wife and I have just had a new child; my 17-year-old daughter has recently come to live with me from New York. So it places me in the home all the time," he said. "I get to sleep in my own bed every night, which is a new experience for me because working in film means being on the road, and working in the theater means the hours that mostly musicians work, so it's late-night stuff. So this has been a tremendous blessing for me at this point in my life."

The original interview can be viewed or listened to at Tavis Smiley's official website, which also has a transcript of the interview.

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