Non-MX Interviews: Lauren Lee Smith (8/08 TV Guide)


TV Guide 8/25/08 Lauren Lee Smith

CSI's New Discovery: Lauren Lee Smith's Sassy Scientist Shakes up the Lab's Chemistry
by Carita Rizzo

The mood in the Las Vegas crime lab has been anything but cheerful lately, with Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox) burning out and Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan) being shot. But when Riley Adams joins the team on October 23, "somber" is not a word anyone would use to describe her.

"Obviously the show has had a few losses, but Riley has no idea what's going on," says Lauren Lee Smith, who's been cast as the lab's new criminalist. "She doesn't really care much about what's just happened. She's like, 'Whatever, I'm here. Let's work.' "

The 28-year-old Canadian actress is no stranger to show business, starring on series like Mutant X and The L Word, but Smith says she wasn't as confident as her character when it came to entering the CSI lab. "I was very nervous," she admits. "It's daunting because everyone knows each other so well. I mean, they've been doing this since 2000!"

But her doubts soon melted away. "They're such a family. Day 1, Billy Peterson came up to me and gave me a giant hug."

It's not all hugs and kisses between Riley and Peterson's Grissom, however. She doesn't necesarrily accept her new boss as the Yoda of crime scene investigation. "For the first time in our group, we have somebody who wasn't mentored by Grissom, so she has a very different relationship with him," executive producer Naren Shankar says. "She's a little smart -- the way the others were with him in the first copule of seasons. There wasn't that deference and automatic acceptance of 'Oh, it's Grissom saying so, so it's gotta be real.' "

But who is Riley Adams? Turns out that's a mystery fit for the CSIs to solve. "She has a past that nobody really knows about," Smith says. "She likes to stretch the truth and give everybody false information, so no one knows what her story is." Still, Smith is convinced her character isn't malicious, and expects to eventually find out the logic behind her white lies. And aside from her air of mystery, Riley's also "fun, spunky, and sassy," Smith adds. "I hope the character will bring a little bit of fresh energy and a lighter feel [to the show]."

Despite her character's eagerness to let loose, though, don't expect her to be a catalyst for some intra-lab romance. "[CSI] is never about looking around to see who's going to jump into bed with somebody else," Shankar says. "But is Riley a girl who has a libido? Absolutely -- and you're going to definitely get a sense that this is a girl who likes to have a good time."

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