Actor: Ted Danson
Multiple Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner Ted Danson's work can be seen on television, film and print. Currently, he also stars in the series "Bored to Death." His other television roles include "Becker" on the Network, "Damages" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm." For 12 years he starred in "Cheers," garnering Golden Globe Awards in 1990 and 1991 and Emmy Awards in 1990 and 1993.
His television film projects include "Knights of the South Bronx," "Our Fathers," "It Must Be Love," "Living with the Dead," "Thanks of a Grateful Nation" and "Something About Amelia," for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in 1984.
Danson's feature film credits include the January 2012 release of "Everybody Loves Whales," "Three Men and a Baby," "Three Men and a Little Lady," "Cousins," "Gulliver's Travels," "Mad Money" and "The Amateurs."
Danson published his first book, Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them, which is currently in book stores.
Character: D.B. Russel
Traditionally on CSI, the rule is: when you have sex, you die. So from the start, our new CSI is breaking new ground. He’s a family man. With four kids. Like the CSIs who’ve come before him, he works his ass of on the job, but unlike them, he looks forward to going home. Really looks forward to it, because he has a healthy and loving relationship with his wife and children. Think CSI: Family Man.
He’s not a nerd, nor a geek, but he is smart -- although he had no formal education until college.
He grew up on a commune in the Bay Area. His parents were hippies, street musicians, counter-culture to their core. During his childhood, they toured the country in a van, folk singing for their supper. He jokes that he wasn’t home-schooled, but van-schooled. But this unorthodox background is the source of his common sense and understanding of human nature. (His first “criminal investigation” took place in the pantry of the commune when he was tasked with finding out who was stealing the sprouts.)
Every crime to him is a story, and every victim is a storyteller. Which is why when we first meet him, we mistake him for a corpse. He’s lying among several dead bodies, eyes closed, as if in meditation. Why? Because he wants to experience every crime scene from the point of view of the victim. How did they get there? What were they doing? What were they thinking? After all, no one gets up in the morning thinking today will be their last. He understands better than anyone that you live your life until you die. He knows this first hand. And we‘ll come to know how as we get to know him.
His ability to emotionally connect to a crime scene extends to the witnesses as well. Because they, too, are living their lives until the moment a crime happens. And if the witness is a 6-year-old boy, like in the Season 12 Premiere, that means crouching down to the child’s level and experiencing the crime through his eyes. And it also may mean drawing that child out with a paper bag and an invisible ball.
Our new CSI started as an English Lit major, given his love of stories, and especially crime stories. His fascination with criminals was so great that he even considered joining the FBI. His hippie parents called it his version of rebellion. But thanks to their own rebellion against the state – multiple arrests for and civil disobedience and the occasional pot bust, he suffered from guilt by association. And didn’t get past page one of the ninety page FBI application questionnaire.
Thinking he might write his own crime stories, he started hanging out in Cop Bars in Oakland. Met a lot of interesting cops and bought a lot of drinks. He befriended one detective in particular who told him law enforcement was changing, no more shoe leather. Everything was going to a lab and coming back with a shiny report. The cops might still be starting the stories, but the CSI guys were getting the good parts. Having read some of our guy’s short stories, the detective told him he was no Dashiell Hammett. So our guy put away his pen and switched to a double major in Biology and Psych.
After graduation, when a job opened up, our new CSI moved to Seattle…and the Washington Crime Lab. Predictably, he fell in love and married a bike-riding tree-hugger. And, he ended up running the Crime Lab. A great lab with CSI superstars, who were as good as they come, but marched to their own drumbeat…
Like Catherine. Like Nick. Like Sara. Like Greg. Which is exactly why he was tapped to take over the Graveyard Shift in Vegas. Because our superstars needed a Phil Jackson. A Zen Master. Who could restore harmony to a team blinded by their loyalty to one another. A loyalty that drove them to go rogue, and perhaps even lose their bearings. They needed a great boss…a great parent. A leader who would support them, but not allow them to foul out. Undersheriff Ecklie found the perfect guy for the job. And for our new CSI, the new job and the new city was a perfect fit.
His youngest son is a freshman on the WLVU basketball team, already a star with NBA scouts sniffing around him. As a father, our new CSI wants to keep his kid’s head straight and keep him in school. He tells him four years of college will make him a better human being, and maybe even a better basketball player.
The job of a CSI is to speak for the dead and bring closure to their loved ones. And no one does it better than our new CSI. He starts every victim’s story with emotion and ends it with emotion.
