Non-MX Interviews: Lauren Lee Smith (12/08 O.C. Register)


Excerpt from The Orange County Register 12/4/08: Lauren Lee Smith

Women of CBS crime shows do fashion shoot in O.C.: Stars of two 'CSI' shows and 'NCIS' get fancy at the Ritz-Carlton.
Thursday, December 4, 2008 By PETER LARSEN

Lauren Lee Smith is ready for her close-up. Hair and makeup are perfect as she browses through racks of couture gowns and rows of designer shoes in an oceanfront suite at the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel.

"This is like getting to indulge in all my girly fantasies," Smith says, wrapped in a plush white hotel robe with cushy white slippers on her feet.

It's also a dramatic change of pace from her day job as Riley Adams on "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," the long-running hit CBS crime procedural which Smith joined this fall as a new investigator.

"Yesterday we were in the medical examiner's office, looking at a guy who killed himself in a deep fryer," she says just as matter-of-factly as you or I might describe our typical day at the office. "And now I'm in Laguna, wearing designer clothes."

Smith and fellow CBS actresses – Eva LaRue of "CSI: Miami" and Cote de Pablo of "NCIS" – spent Wednesday at the Ritz-Carlton posing for photos that will run in CBS Watch! magazine next spring.

It was a chance for the three women who normally appear on television in casual or business styles to dress up for a day in gowns by Marchesa, Tadashi and Kevan Hall, shoes by Christian Louboutin and Guiseppe Zanotti and a few million dollars worth of jewels borrowed from Black, Starr & Frost.

Months from now, Smith, LaRue and de Pablo will appear as glamorous visions roaming the grounds of the Ritz-Carlton. But you want to know what happens behind the scenes, don't you? So read on, and we'll share a bit of what we saw and heard at the Ritz-Carlton.

The shoot begins a little before 11 a.m., with Smith, wearing a teal Juicy Couture bathing suit with ruffles at the waist and a ribbed bodice, reclining on a chaise longue on a balcony overlooking the ocean.

"We're here to capture the sultry ladies of crime," says Angelique O'Neil, the magazine's creative director, in an interview videotaped – as was most of the shoot – to be offered to the TV entertainment shows for their use. "We're taking them out of the world of crime wear and bringing them into the world of high fashion."

Across the balcony, photographer Cliff Lipson clicked one digital frame after another on his Hasselblad camera. A crew that numbered close to 20 hovered around Lipson and Smith, tending to the light, checking the digital frames as they popped up on a computer monitor moments after each shot, jumping in and out of the scene to freshen Smith's makeup or hair.

"This shoot, think 'Charlie's Angels' but couture gown, beautiful hair, hot, sexy makeup and three incredibly beautiful women just busting up the lens," Lipson tells the videographer after wrapping the first shot of the day."

Everyone wanders back through the massive hotel to the fourth-floor suite that serves as a studio for the day. Racks of couture fill one corner. Off in a private room, Smith and de Pablo are changing outfits. In another, the hair and makeup artists wait to do their next looks.

A dining room table displays a few million dollars worth of jewels – a 16-caret fancy yellow, princess-cut engagement ring is the priciest at $1.2 million, but a diamond-and-ruby necklace with roughly 135 carets of jewels on it isn't far behind with a price tag of $892,000.

Brought to the hotel from the jewelry store in South Coast Plaza, they are guarded by two men with guns much more serious than the prop weapons that lie near the jewels on the table.
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Later, after all three women are made over once again – this time for a group shot that features de Pablo in a Michael DePaulo and LaRue and Smith both in Kevan Hall – de Pablo says much the same as Smith and LaRue had about the day.

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