“CSI: NY’s” Gary Sinise likes to note that skylines aren’t the only difference between his show and its CBS siblings.
Take those overcoats, for instance.
Such outerwear is not often seen on either of the other two crime scene investigation shows – “CSI,” which is set in balmy Las Vegas, and “CSI: Miami,” where its downright steamy.
“Obviously, we have a change of seasons, so the look of our show changes from season to season,” says Sinise, wearing, yes, an overcoat between scenes on a mild Southern California day.
He plays Mac Taylor, who is the head of New York City’s crime lab and has a penchant for quantum physics. On this day, Mac has just finished examining incriminating data on a college dorm computer in connection with a homicide case.
“All the shows function off the same premise, but each show has its own individual set of writers and producers, and cast, so that makes us unique in itself, and then New York is a unique city, a melting pot,” he says.
Perhaps for that reason, when Sinise was first approached about headlining the series, his character had a different name.
“I think it was Carlucci, or something like that, and I said, ‘I just don’t feel like a Carlucci,’ ” he says, a faint trace of a smile flickering across his stern face.
“Sinise is actually Italian, but Carlucci is far more ethnically specific, so we started working out what his name would be and his background,” the low-key star explains, noting that in this third season it’s hard to fully remember which were his ideas and which were the producer’s.
On a soundstage on the CBS lot in suburban Studio City, pictures of Taylor in his previous job as a Marine hang on the walls of the crime-unit office alongside a plaque with a maxim about the importance of a nation taking “care of its dead.”
Taylor is a widower who lost his wife in the 9/11 attacks – a plot point that in 2004 led the series to film the conclusion of its first episode at Ground Zero.
“I think he’s very private. That doesn’t necessarily have to be a flaw, but some people can interpret it that way,” says Sinise, who tends to be that way himself. “He brings leadership ability to the job. … He’s got a lot of integrity. He’s the kind of guy you want in charge. He’s just very businesslike.”
Most episodes of “CSI: NY” feature two plot lines, so in this episode – airing at 10 tonight – Taylor’s cohort, Detective Stella Bonasera (Melina Kanakaredes), finds herself interrogating a shoplifter played by singer Nelly Furtado, who is linked to a different murder case.
Fetching in a dark-green velvet jacket – her trademark curly hair gleaming – Kanakaredes explains she was attracted to the role because “it’s the polar opposite of what I was known for, (the TV series) ‘Providence’ being a feel-good show, and this being a death and dying show.”
The cast has similar notions about why audiences are attracted to the series.
“Our stories are all-inclusive. … There’s a sense of mystery and excitement,” says Kanakaredes.
“People like to watch people in uncomfortable positions, I guess. … But it’s also watching people solving a mystery and that’s something people are always interested in,” says Carmine Giovinazzo, who plays Danny Messer, the crime unit’s smart aleck.
“They are little Sherlock Holmes (tales). Agatha Christie type mysteries. For centuries, people have been captivated, fascinated by mysteries. We do them every week,” says Sinise, whose breakout role came in 1994’s “Forrest Gump” as Vietnam vet Lt. Dan.
Although crime solving drives the show, the actors seek to inject as many shadings as possible into the characters. Research and expert technical advice help them with crime-lab jargon and procedure.
“I usually prefer to know what I’m talking about when I’m acting, although there have been times when I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about,” says Sinise, with just a hint of humor.
Hill Harper, who plays Chief Medical Examiner Sheldon Hawkes, is “a fan of research,” he says. He sat in on an autopsy where “the smell was the most intense” he’d ever experienced. That was, until he went to the Body Farm, the famed University of Tennessee research center where corpses are studied in various stages of decomposition. “That made my autopsy experience seem like nothing.”
No smell effects are added to the dead bodies portrayed by live actors and brilliant prosthetics on “CSI: NY,” but there’s gore aplenty.
Kanakaredes makes sure her little daughters, who accompany her to work, don’t glimpse any bloodied, battered or carved-up actors.
“There will be this man with half of his face blown off, talking on a cell phone and smoking a cigarette in the studio parking lot, and like ‘ixnay’ on coming this way,” says Kanakaredes in a mock warning. “It’s not Halloween, and I don’t want my children to see you.”
