Anyone care to speculate how he leaves the show?

#1: Leaves with Sara
#2: Leaves with the dominatrix chick
#3: Gets killed off
#4: Just wants to be left alone
#5: Just goes

• RE: William Petersen Leaving CSI,Loree, 03:22 PM, 07-19-08
  • RE: William Petersen Leaving CSI,Asrai, 01:29 AM, 08-21-08
    • RE: William Petersen Leaving CSI,trigirl, 09:32 AM, 09-02-08

William Petersen peaces out

By Chloe Tse

2008-07-15

Gil Grissom is leaving ‘CSI’ next year!

After an eight-year stint, CSI veteran William Petersen will step down from his role as a full-time series regular on the 10th episode of the CBS series next year.

"Billy is leaving," confirmed the show's executive producer, Carol Mendelsohn, to Entertainment Weekly. "But he will remain throughout the run of the series as an executive producer. And he will, whenever CBS asks, come back. I don't think you've seen the last of Gil Grissom."

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is still CBS’s top-rated show, and despite Petersen’s departure, execs don’t expect to see ratings nosedive. Although, he is the third original cast member to exit the show within a year’s time – following the lead of Jorja Fox and Gary Dourdan.

The show will be going through a huge transition next season. Mendelsohn is concocting a rich plot to send off her leading man. Considering last season’s finale, it’s clear that Petersen’s Grissom is going through a crisis – especially after the death of Dourdan’s Warrick Brown.

They’re bringing back Fox’s Sara Sidle to help him heal through multiple episodes. Grissom’s ladylove will be around for his final curtain call in his last episode.

Can we predict a fairy tale ending for a happy couple – complete with riding off into a sunset?

- - - - - - - - -

CSI: Who Should Replace Grissom?

At Friday's executive session, Nina Tassler, president of CBS Entertainment, announced a new character on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Tassler's description of the character, who will replace the departing William Petersen, was interesting, to say the least. He's a doctor and scientist who comes into the CSI as an outsider; he won't start off as the boss. Here's the catch: He's a bit of a DNA expert, and has identified a common profile among serial killers — in his own genes! Sounds a little Dexter-y, no?

So, who do you think should play Dr. McSerialKiller? Tassler suggested they'd be looking for an actor of some stature to fill the role. My first thoughts: Oscar nominees Laurence Fishburne and David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck), both of whom can convey steely resolve and menace with equal skill. — Mickey O'Connor

Laurence Fishburne is the new guy! Great choice!

In case peeps can't (or don't want to) follow links for whatever reason:

Laurence Fishburne joining "CSI" cast

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Stage and screen star Laurence Fishburne's last turn as a series regular on network television was the role of Cowboy Curtis on the 1980s kids show "Pee-wee's Playhouse."

So the acclaimed actor better known for playing dark, brooding characters says he looks forward to his new TV gig as a forensics investigator with disturbing tendencies on the hit CBS detective drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."

Not that he had ever seen the series before his first meeting with the show's executive producers, Carol Mendelsohn and Naren Shankar.

"I felt a little stupid and embarrassed that I hadn't watched the show prior to having a meeting with them," Fishburne, 47, acknowledged in a conference call with reporters for the announcement that he is joining the show's cast.

"But I'm happy to say that the episodes that they sent me to look at were really, really engaging and really wonderful, and kind of dark and moody, like a lot of the work that I've actually been involved in," he added. "So I'm very excited."

Famed for his movie work as Morpheus in "The Matrix" trilogy and his Oscar-nominated role as Ike Turner in "What's Love Got to Do With It," Fishburne is slated to make his "CSI" debut in episode nine of the show's upcoming ninth season.

"CSI," which averaged 17 million viewers last season, ranks as CBS's top-rated show and the third most-watched scripted series in all of U.S. prime time.

Mendelsohn and Shankar hailed Fishburne as their "dream" casting choice.

He was hired to replace actor William Petersen, who has starred since the show's inception in 2000 as Gil Grissom, the brainy head of a Las Vegas police crime scene unit, and is leaving the series to follow other creative pursuits.

PROFESSOR WITH 'DISTURBING' PAST

Producers said Fishburne and Petersen will overlap for two episodes, probably airing in mid-December of early 2009, before Petersen's exit. Production on those episodes is set to begin next month, they said.

Fishburne will join the cast as a medical doctor and expert in criminal behavior who, after being forced out of his career as a research pathologist, became a college professor and ends up involved in a CSI investigation, Shankar said.

Fishburne's character, who does not yet have a name, specializes in probing the underlying causes of violent, aggressive behavior, "tendencies he disturbingly sees within himself," according to CBS press materials.

But Shankar said producers have backed off an earlier idea that the character's own genetic profile might match that of many serial killers.

"CSI" marks Fishburne's return to the CBS network two decades after his recurring role as the psychedelic Cowboy Curtis with Paul Reuben's Pee-wee Herman character on the children's television show "Pee-wee's Playhouse."

Fishburne's other small-screen credits include the HBO television movies "Miss Evers' Boys," for which he won an Emmy, and "The Tuskegee Airmen." He also won an Emmy for his guest appearance in the pilot episode of the short-lived Fox series "Tribeca."

Fishburne recently completed a Broadway run, and earned a Tony Award nomination, for his role as Thurgood Marshall in the one-man show "Thurgood." In 1992, he won a Tony for his stage performance in the August Wilson play "Two Trains Running."

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

Scooping stars with Sharnina

Marvelous casting!!!!!!!!

bouncey by Ice