Ward: I’m Still Trying To Find My Way

Sela Ward (Jo Danville) and Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor) met during the mid-1990s on the award show circuit. More than a decade after their memorable introduction, they are now working together on the cast of CSI: New York. (Spoilers after the jump!)

As CSI Files previously reported, Ward and Sinise met during award show season—Ward was being recognized for her work in the Lifetime film Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story, and Sinise was also in the TV movie category for his HBO film Truman. The pair bumped into each other during several events. “I kept thinking, ‘This is the neatest guy. I’d love to work with him one day,'” Ward explained to Zap2It. “In the back of my mind, my experience of him was that he was so gracious. He’s such an accessible, down-to-earth guy, I never forgot how taken I was with who he was as a person.”

Ward got her wish when she joined the cast of New York. Her character, former FBI agent Jo Danville, has an interesting introduction to the CSI team: she walks in to find a dead body on the floor of the New York Crime Lab. “It actually wasn’t written that way,” Ward explained. “It was originally written so that you see Jo walking down a New York street with her rolling bag and stopping to hail a cab, then this guy tries to pick her up as she’s getting in the cab.” She added, “When she blows him off, he starts to take the cab—and she smashes his foot with her rolling bag. Then our producer Pam [Veasey] said, ‘Why are my guys not the first people she meets?’ So they decided to change that up.”

After Melina Kanakaredes (Stella Bonasera) announced that she was leaving CSI: NY, Ward was cast very quickly. In fact, she didn’t have time to do any research before she joined the series. “I’m still trying to find my way,” the actress admitted. “It’s not an easy thing to walk into this kind of world if you’ve never done anything like this before. The dialogue alone makes your head spin.”