Sela Ward, To Replace Melina Kanakaredes At CSI: NY

Sela Ward, To Replace Melina Kanakaredes At CSI: NY:CSI: NY was a unique set of problems heading into his seventh season. Show moved to Friday night, where the writers would figure out how to fix last season’s “Shot in the Dark” Rock-hanger with a serial killer Shane Casey (guest star Edward Furlong) and married CSI Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) and Lindsay (Anna Belknap ) Messer.
The series stars Melina Kanakaredes, who plays Detective Stella Bonasera since the show premiered, quit a few weeks before the start of production. “We had written six scripts for a break,” executive producer Pam Veasey says TVGuide.com. “We developed the story, who were ready to prepare for shooting, and they all participate Stella. Then, Fallout happened.”
Veasey said after three days of intense phone calls, she found a silver lining the clouds: Emmy and Golden Globe-winner Sela Ward has signed a contract to replace Kanakaredes at the show.
“Timing is everything,” Ward said during a break in filming its first episode. “I have not worked in a while, because I was spending time with my children. But now that they’re a little older, I began to feel a little antsy, and then I got a phone call. The thing that was attractive to me was that an ensemble show. I’m not going to wear it all on my shoulders. ”
But Veasey even back to Square 1. “You definitely want more time for character development, but Sela has helped to bring so much to it in the first episode,” she says. “But it will revive us a little bit. It’s interesting to create a new character, who remains with us week after week.”
Ward plays Joe Danville, amicably divorced single mother and former FBI agent from Virginia. She finds work on a Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) in the forensic laboratory of New York to be closer to his son who just started college in the city. Veasey says Joe is somewhat a fish out of water. “It’s a little softer, slower. South does not move as fast as New York, and we are not trying to change it,” Veasey says. “It’s a little messy. She thinks about the people first. She understands science, but it is also a very clever suggestion-maker.”
Sinise said he expects Mac and Joe build a working relationship. “Mac and Stella was a great partnership, which was created before the first season,” he says. “Now we’re going to have some fun watching these characters know each other better.
Exclusive: Edward James Olmos, a guest on CSI: NY
“Joe what a new approach to work,” he continues. “It comes from the FBI, and she worked on a lot of psychological cases. It’s interesting to see what they do with her character in terms of type mind games it plays, not only with criminals, she goes in for questioning, but with her own colleagues.”
But what about Cliff-hanger? And where is Stella going? Resolutions of the first helps to explain, secondly, as Stella wrote a letter to troubled Lindsay, which puts all the pieces together regarding the absence of Stella. But most of the first episode focuses on Lindsay in the period after injury.
“We spend the first act to see where Lindsay in her life,” Veasey says. “We wanted to start with a fun, new direction. It’s five months later, but we see that it is considered and happily move on from that.”
CSI: NY scoop: Melrose Place, Thomas Calabro, to guest star
Veasey said the introduction of Joe to the team will actually be helpful to move the show on Friday. “Once you get to add a new character, a pleasure which that person to find out who our people,” she says. “It reintroduces them to the audience or those who may not have watched the show.”
And each of the characters get a showcase episode very early on, Veasey said. Mac will go toe to toe with guest stars Edward James Olmos and John Larroquette in separate stories. Adam (AD Buckley) will be released from the laboratory. Viewers will meet a partner from the past Danny. And Hawkes (Hill Harper) will be shown in an episode about ghosts in Central Park.
“We really landed on our characters having some personal pull in a detective in the season,” Veasey says. “Do they know the person or not, nature will lead us through this, and not a crime.”