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______________________ -OTHER SPOILERS- Use EasyEdit to add Season 9 Rumors and Spoilers!Please respect members who do not wish to be spoiled with information and pictures from yet to be aired future episodes by keeping comments to this information off the general threads, but on threads connected to this page.Thank you! ============================================================================To fill out the cast, “CSI” will be adding a new character, a doctor with an intriguing backstory who’ll eventually take charge of the investigative unit. I asked executive producer Naren Shankar about what the future held for the show. First I’ll list the newsy bullet points of that conversation, with a longer explanation of the new “CSI” character following that.* For the 200th episode, director William Friedkin is coming back to direct an episode of the show.* Petersen will remain an executive producer on the show and “if [a] story line creatively needs Grissom then he’s totally willing to come back and do it,” Shankar said. “What [CBS president] Nina [Tassler] was really getting at [when she talked about the character] was that the new character has a genetic complex, a number of different genes and elements, that have been correlated with criminal behavior.” This man becomes involved with the “CSI” unit over the course of an investigation, as an expert witness. “He’s an academic, he has a background in clinical pathology,” Shankar said.Through his exposure to the world of criminal investigations and forensics, “he decides that this might be an interesting way to explore himself. He feels that if he has these genetic tendencies, maybe a way to see …if he has the ability [to become] a criminal -- a way to look at it is by understanding and studying violent criminals, what they do and why they do it. In a sense it’s like holding up a mirror to himself, but in an exciting and interesting way -- it’s a new career. That’s really the angle we’re going with,” Shankar said. “Our feeling is, and you never really know til you actually cast it, is that he’s going to a more volatile, maybe a little less predictable character than Grissom. But again, this is in the very early stages,” he added. Shankar couldn’t address what actors the show was approaching to take the role, except to confirm that the show had approached John Malkovich but that didn’t work out.He said they were planning on the character joining the show in Episode 9 of the new season, so that the new guy and Petersen could interact for at least two episodes. They have around a month or a month and a half to find the actor who’ll join the show, he said.Shankar said that the first four episodes of the new season have already been shot, and that the show will start up production in mid-August with Episode 5.I asked if he was worried about alienating any segments of the passionate “CSI” fan base with any of the episodes or story arcs for the new season or with the changes in the cast. “There’s a whole segment of the fan base that goes crazy over this [personal] stuff, then a whole segment of the fan base that doesn’t want that stuff at all. ‘I don’t care about Grissom and whoever, I just want a good mystery,’” Shankar said. “You can never make everyone happy and if you try to you're bound to fail. All you can try to do is tell a great mystery week after week after week.”“Unlike a lot of shows that get very deep into their run, we try so hard to remember what we are, to never forget what we are. We are not going to become a soap opera. We are not going to change, for lack of a better term, the DNA of what the show is. Because what we are at its heart is a crime-solving mystery/forensics drama. That is what we are, down to the tiniest molecule of what the show is,” he said. Source: Chicago Tribune==============================================================================All together now, CSI fans: Breathe. Executive producer Carol Mendelsohn assures me that her team was anything but blindsided by the upcoming departure of William Petersen. "We do have a plan," she says. And that plan includes not only Grissom's sure-to-be-stellar swan song, but also the arrival of some new blood (one with funky DNA), the return of some old blood (welcome back, Jorja Fox!) and an episode that's been nearly nine years in the making. Here, Mendelsohn and fellow EP Naren Shankar offer an exclusive preview of what will go down when this sure-to-be-controversial season starts up.* Another new CSI, this time a male, will be brought in later this fall, but "he will not appear on the landscape as a CSI to begin with," teases Mendelsohn. "He's a professor with background in pathology. He will appear when Grissom is investigating what will be a two-part case. He will help Grissom and the team bring the perpetrator to justice, and then this character will stay around and ultimately become a CSI." And although Mendelsohn says the new guy (who will possess a very rare genetic abnormality) will "not necessarily [replace Grissom as] supervisor," he'll inevitably be branded Petersen's replacement -- if for no other reason than the caliber of actor being sought for the role: Kurt Russell, Laurence Fishburne and John Malkovich are said to be at the top of CBS' wish list. Of the three, Mendelsohn would only confirm that Malkovich was approached, adding that "scheduling conflicts" had quickly taken him out of the running.* Current cast members Liz Vassey (lab rat Wendy) and David Berman (coroner David) have been upped to full-fledged series regulars. Wallace Langham's Hodges, meanwhile, will become more prominent. * Finally, the show will celebrate its landmark 200th episode this spring with a blockbuster installment helmed once again by Petersen's good friend (and To Live and Die in L.A. director) William Friedkin. Is it fair to assume that this could be the episode in which Petersen debuts as a very special CSI guest star? "Billy will definitely be on the set for Mr. Friedkin's episode -- whether it's behind the camera or in front of the camera is TBD," Mendelsohn teases. "I don't think you'll be able to keep him away once he's back in L.A." << Back to CSI Spoilers