From CBSNEWS.com: 'C.S.I.' Breakthrough
NEW YORK, Oct. 15, 2003

C.S.I. is the highest rated series of the new fall season.

The team of high tech forensic specialists includes actor Gary Dourdan, who plays Warrick Brown.

The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen recently caught up with Dourdan at a photo shoot where he talked about his newfound fame.

The actor says he'd never believed he would be a part of a No. 1 show.

"Certainly after shooting the pilot we had no idea," says Dourdan. "We knew it was good, we knew we were doing something else on TV, but No. 1 show in the world? It's bizarre."

Gary Dourdan's character, Warrick Brown, is the focus of this week's "C.S.I." In the episode, called "Invisible Evidence," a homicide investigation hinges on his testimony. But an illegal search threatens the case when the murder weapon is ruled inadmissible.

The story is based on real C.S.I. agents' stories of the delicate job they do.

"If something is not done right, then they can throw the whole case out," Dourdan says. "It doesn't matter if beyond a shadow of a doubt this guy's guilty. So that's what happens, and then they have 24 hours to bring them new evidence."

The actor often gets his inspiration from real crime scene investigators. But he says their gruesome stories stay with him long after filming has stopped.

"Some of them say they still can't deal with the smell of what it smells like to go into the death scene, it just stays on your clothes," he explains. "It's just the things that they deal with every day. So we try and personify more of that when we work."

Between takes, Dourdan turns to music to lighten his mood. He also mentors aspiring musicians in his home studio. And he supports the artistic talents of his neighbors in Venice Beach, California.

"I think that Venice is the only village in Southern California," Dourdan laughs … “It's the Lower East Side with a beach."

Dourdan says he draws as a hobby, but he gives his time and money to others. It's important to Dourdan, who not so long ago was a struggling artist himself looking for his big break.

"Starting out, a lot of people gave me a chance, and I probably wouldn't be here in the business and have this longevity if it weren't for a lot of people, like Gregory Hines," he says.

FROM Philadelphia Daily News: 'CSI's' Dourdan center of tonight's plot

Posted October 16,2003
By Ellen Gray
graye@phillynews.com

CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION. 9 tonight, Channel 3.

It's not always fun being one of the guys who gets to scrape the DNA evidence off the carpet.

But "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation's" Gary Dourdan has come to terms with it.

"There are times when you go, 'Is there another way they could have written this?' But then when you talk to the real people, their jobs are so much more unglamorous than we're making it look," the West Philadelphia-born actor said yesterday. "It's not a soap. Luckily," he said.

Which doesn't mean Dourdan, 36, a Freedom Theater veteran whose family moved to Willingboro, N.J., when he was 9 or 10, isn't thrilled that his character, Warrick Brown, gets to have more fun than usual - or at least more varied work - in tonight's episode, "Invisible Evidence."

"I was really surprised, because the fellow who wrote it , Josh Berman, in the beginning, we were on each other's s- - - list," and while they'd eventually sat down and talked about their differences, Dourdan said he hadn't expected Berman to come up with a script that "was mainly about my character and the struggle that he goes through...I was smitten."

Though he said he thought this season's scripts were more "ambitious" than in the past, Dourdan doesn't mince words about some of the writing from past seasons.

On "CSI," "we're constantly upstaged by the props," he said. Thanks to the show's tendency to zoom viewers into the heart of a bullet wound in the middle of a conversation, "oftentimes it felt like an infomercial I'm doing," he said.

Keeping the dialogue as real as the science is a constant challenge for the actors, he said. "I change my lines all the time," he said, implying that he's not the only one.

"Billy's [William Petersen] doing a tremendous amount of work leading the show. Marg [Helgenberger] has done a tremendous amount of work," Unlike actors on shows like "Six Feet Under" and "The Sopranos," he said, "we're not painting by numbers. On our show, the actors are the actors and writers."

Which could make tonight's episode unique: "I hardly changed a word in that script and I was really surprised," Dourdan said.