Giovinazzo: It’s A Good Place To Be

CSI: New York‘s Carmine Giovinazzo (Danny Messer) enjoys coming to work and sinking his teeth into intense storylines for his character.

For Giovinazzo, being on New York is its own reward. The best part is “[t]hat I’m getting to do what I love every day, that I’m getting to act and that’s great,” he told Inquirer.net. “I think it’s a good place to be as far as people are concerned. It’s nice to have somewhere to go to every day. It’s nice to have a place to go, especially in this time. It’s good to have a steady job.”

Despite being surrounded by death on a regular basis, Giovinazzo isn’t affected by the gruesome nature of the series. “I think that as long ago as the first and second season, that aspect of it has become fairly removed,” the actor explained. “At first, it was pretty intense dealing with all the blood but to be honest with you, you kind of get to the point where it’s not…I mean, there are certain episodes about something that’s pretty intense or pretty traumatic so you can get moved by it but, I don’t know, I’m pretty detached from that reality. It’s not really a big deal for me, to be honest with you.”

The CSI: NY set is anything but dark and depressing, he revealed. “It’s definitely not grim at all on set. It’s very mellow except probably when I’m there,” Giovinazzo said with a laugh. “The people there are pretty…all the crew and everyone working on it have been there for a while, that we’re all casual with each other, very close with each other. I’m very close with the camera guys, I play music with one of the camera guys. Gary[ Sinise, Mac Taylor]’s really mellow and to the point and Eddie [Cahill, Don Flack] and I have gotten close over the years so we manage to have fun. When I’m not doing something that’s being in a wheelchair or something serious, it’s work. It’s a grind.”

The shooting that left Danny in a wheelchair at the start of season six was one of several big storylines the character has dealt with recently—and Giovinazzo doesn’t mind that at all. “I think that it’s been like that for me from the beginning,” he said. “I think without that I would have gone crazy at this point. Just doing the CSI stuff and straight science and the straight mystery all the time would have really gotten boring. Every time these things come up and they come up a lot, I’ve always been…fantastic.”

During season six, Giovinazzo penned his first episode, “Sanguine Love”. “It stems from my brother,” the actor explained. “He’s a cop and he had a few ideas, we both had ideas we were discussing. He had one that was about this guy who apparently vandalized and I believe killed a few people in Brooklyn and he would dress up as a vampire. He was obviously somebody who was out of his mind and who was a bit insane. When he mentioned that, I had kind of started writing my own story about vampirism and when I talked to the writers about it, they liked the vampire idea because it was popular and all that. I kinda ended up writing a different story but around the theme of vampirism.”

Writing an episode wasn’t easy. “Yeah, it was very difficult,” he added. “I just spent a good two months really writing and prepping the show with the director, and everybody else involved—the set designer, wardrobe, the props, the cast. You get involved with the pre-production and once it started shooting, I was on set every day, for every scene, sitting behind the director, discussing and talking and making sure everything is the way I want it to go.”

Despite the difficulties, Giovinazzo really enjoyed being a writer for the show. “I would like to do it again,” he said. “I don’t know what the topic would be but I really want to move forward and direct an episode this coming season.”

Source: Inquirer.net. Thanks to csimania19 from TalkCSI for the link.