William Petersen: 'CSI' Made Nerds Look Cool Again

In a recent interview with the Australian television show A Current Affair, William Petersen (Gil Grissom) talked about the effects of CSI's popularity.

CSI has made crime scene investigation so trendy that millions of young students are now striving to become little Grissoms. The cast and crew are proud of this achievement. "That's what the pull of the show seems to be," he said. "We seemed to have made nerds cool again."

CSI has also made nerds look sexy. It's not uncommon to turn into the show and see the investigators wearing provocative clothes. "That's a good thing," Petersen pressed. "We were in the real crime lab in Las Vegas talking to the real guys. I found them to be very interesting and sexy in their way, you know? So, that's okay."

But the show tends to receive criticism where the science is concerned. Real life scientists have been vocal about the portrayal of procedures on the show, which can sometimes seem unrealistic. George Eads (Nick Stokes), however, finds it makes the show cooler. "It just TV so I mean I think it's a very high compliment that people really think that we get DNA that fast, or we solve every case like this."

The success of CSI was such that the producers decided to expand the idea into a franchise, creating CSI: Miami and CSI: New York. But Petersen still hasn't warmed up to the idea of the two shows. "I don't know how they help our show. You always want to be special. You always want to feel like you are the only ones that can do this, and I still feel that way. I still feel that we do it better than anybody."

The actor, however, said he might not remain on the show to see the very end. When asked if he plans to work through 100 more episodes on the series he replied, "Well, I'll be way too old."

Visit MSN in order to download a video of the interview.

Discuss this news item at Talk CSI!
 Add CSI Files RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a Desperate Housewives fan? Then visit GetDesperate.com!