Monday May 21, 2007
Nice surprise
By ZACK YUSOF
Acting on CSI: NYI has given Claire Forlani a new appreciation of television work.
Photogenic British actress Claire Forlani’s may prefer to work in movies, but her recent stint on CSI: NY has helped change her perception of the quality of work featured on television.
The way Forlani tells it, working on TV wasn’t something that she had planned on. But in the end, it turned out to be a “nice surprise” as well as a real challenge.
Despite never having watched a single episode of CSI: NY before, she was keen to try out her acting chops when offered a role in the series.
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Claire Forlani: "I found working on television to be a very different creative process." |
“I found working on television to be a very different creative process. It’s been very interesting. I’ve had a nice time and I’ve met a good bunch of people to explore television with.
“I must say that I still prefer movie making because I like things to have a beginning, a middle and an end. I like having a set amount of time to create something.
“But working on CSI has given me a new appreciation of just how interesting TV work can be. I’m still new to TV but I’ve really enjoyed my experience working on it.”
For CSI: NY’s third season, Forlani, who has stared alongside Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Affleck and Ben Stiller in movies like Mallrats, Meet Joe Black and Mystery Men, joins the cast in a recurring role as the team’s new medical examiner. She happens to be having a relationship with Detective Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise), and that provides viewers something of an unexpected romantic interest in an otherwise serious drama.
Forlani stars as Dr Peyton Driscoll, the team’s beautiful and sharp new coroner who hails from London but completed her education in America.
The story goes that Driscoll began her career in the New York crime lab where she worked alongside Dr Hawkes (Hill Harper) for two years, during which time she frequently paired up with Mac on jobs.
Although they never dated back then, there was chemistry between them and after a chance encounter, the two rekindle their relationship.
After deciding to leave her job to pursue a career teaching anatomy at a prominent university, she eventually returns to the medical examiner’s office after finding academia too safe for her tastes.
As the two begin working together again, Mac quickly realises that dating someone he works with may be a unique challenge as he tries to figure out the professional and personal connotations of his private and public lives intersecting.
For Forlani, the main thing that enticed her to take on the role was that the show’s writers and producers primarily wanted her to come in and be a romantic foil for Mac Taylor – Sinise’s character.
“What’s been really wonderful is that they’ve been writing some really great scenes for us,” she enthused.
“So, even though I’ve been doing the medical examiner CSI stuff, I’ve also had some very emotional, layered, and more dramatic stuff to do, which Gary has been enjoying as well. They’ve actually surprised me with how well they have been writing these scenes. It’s been really good fun doing them.
“The romantic side of my character was what appealed to me about the role. That’s what made it interesting and why I gave it a go. If I had just been a medical examiner, I wouldn't have been as appealing. What’s great is that because I got to do those scenes and have those fun acting moments with Gary, I’ve actually started to enjoy the medical examiner stuff.
“At the beginning, I was very intimidated by that because the language is really complex. I was thinking, ‘Man, am I ever going to get this?’ (Laughs) I never had to work so hard to memorise lines in my life, you know?
“But as you get into it, you really start to understand what you are saying. It became more and more interesting as I went along.”
In preparation for her role, Forlani spent a lot of quality time talking to the show’s team of medical examiners and experts, who are always on set.
As for the similarities between her and her character, she commented: “They really are different, those medical examiner types, because they are dealing with things on a daily basis that would be traumatic to you.
“The part that is very different and which I really had to think about in the beginning was the fact that these people see bodies that have had horrifying things done to them.
“And they look at a body almost like an experiment, trying to figure out what has occurred. It’s very scientific, but I’m not very scientific at all. I’m a very visceral, emotional person so that kind of detachment that the profession creates makes for a very interesting character.”
While working with the regular CSI: NY cast members like Sinise, Carmine Giovinazzo, Eddie Cahill and Melina Kanakaredes was a thoroughly enjoyable and pleasant experience for Forlaini, what really struck her was just how knowledgeable the actors were about the world of forensics and medical examining.
““They have been doing the show for a while now so they really know what they are talking about when it comes to crime and medical examining,” she reckoned.
Having come from the world of big-budget Hollywood movies, Forlani is used to working with huge sets. However, just how large a scale that the hugely popular CSI franchise operated on took her by surprise.
“I didn’t think about it. I’ve been fortunate to have been offered wonderful parts and this was just another lovely opportunity. I hadn’t thought about it until I stepped on set for the first time.
“My first scene on CSI was on the Brooklyn Bridge, with helicopters. The street had been sealed off and the entire cast was present and I had to come out with 10 lines of medical dialogue and that was when I panicked.
“I think I messed up the take about three times and they had to hold the cars and the helicopters and reset everything. But the cast was very sweet to me so that was good.”
CSI: NY airs on AXN (Astro channel 17) on Mondays at 10pm.
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