Langham: Bowling Is My Secret Sport

David Hodges joined the rest of the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation team at a bowling alley at the end of “Lover’s Lanes” last month, and the man behind the character, Wallace Langham, is no stranger to the game.

Langham was recently in his home town of Forth Worth, Texas to help re-launch the Fort Worth Science and History Museum. One exhibit at the museum is “CSI: The Experience”. Langham knows all about the CSI experience after portraying Hodges in more than 120 episodes—and when it came time to film the bowling scenes for “Lover’s Lanes”, he was no novice. “Bowling has always been sort of my secret sport,” he revealed. “It’s one thing I can do not too badly. . . . One of the pros on that episode said he could work with me, and in three months I’d have a 180 game.”

Bowling may not be a new thing for Langham, but it was something unexpected for the forensic drama. “It came as a kind of surprise to me,” Langham added. “All of a sudden the CSI team is bowling. What! The team has never bowled before.”

Langham has been bowling since he was young. He also knew what he wanted to do from an early age. “I was a latchkey kid who would come home from school and watch TV all day,” he said. “Eventually, I said: ‘I think I want to be on that.'” When he wasn’t watching television and planning his future career, Langham liked to surf and hang out “at this great old bowling alley in Hollywood around the corner from my house.”

While acting has been Langham’s dream for many years, he’s not exactly a well-known name. “‘Oh, that guy!’ I really enjoy that reaction,” he said. “I love being in the middle. I’m not the person who is being mobbed every 10 feet as they walk down the street, but I’m also not the person who has to say, ‘Hey, look at me, look at me, look at me.'”

The actor was originally only signed on for a few episodes of CSI, but Hodges is still around more than six years later. “I’ve been lucky enough to fall into those roles that can be memorable,” Langham explained. Another of his memorable roles was as Josh Blair, Kirstie Alley‘s gay assistant on Veronica’s Closet from 1997 to 2000. “First it was Ellen DeGeneres saying she’s coming out. Then it was our show. Then right after that, Will & Grace came on,” Langham said. “Nowadays, if you don’t have a gay character on your show, you’ve got a problem. That’s a testament to how our culture is changing. Back then, it felt like an honor to be entrusted with something that is very personal to a lot of people.”

Langham was also honored to be asked back to Fort Worth to help re-launch the museum. The city, like the man, has changed a lot since he moved to Los Angeles with his mother at the age of nine. “It’s staggering, really,” he said. “I never would have dreamed when I was nine years old that I’d be able to come back to my hometown and be a part of one of the biggest TV shows in history and to be a part of their science museum. It’s pretty wild.”