A commanding figure in the film and theatre world, Laurence Fishburne was a perfect choice to step into the hot lights of the small screen when the biggest show on television—CSI—needed a new leader.

On a freakishly warm January day in Los Angeles, Laurence Fishburne is dressed in black. His gait is long and confident as he exits Stage 25 on the Universal lot, where CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is filmed. A brand-new cast member on the 9-year old hit forensic drama, Fishburne nonetheless strides as if he owns the place.
        That’s because the 47-year-old, born in Augusta, Ga., and raised by his divorced mom in Brooklyn, has been hanging out on stages like these since he was 10. It was Fishburne’s mother who first noticed his gift for the dramatic, and nudged him toward Broadway. When performing in his first play, he says, “I discovered what I was going to do. I knew that as an actor, I could be anything.”

CAMOUFLAGE AND JHERI CURLS
At age 12, Fishburne landed a three-year gig on the New York-produced soap opera One Life to Live. And even then, the actor was exhibiting the seriousness for which he would soon come to be known. “I gravitated toward the tragic, and I don’t know why,” he remembers. “But it just appealed to me. So I guess I was a natural fit for daytime soap opera, which is fraught with tragedy and betrayal.” The sudsy role led to Fishburne’s film debut, in the 1975 ghetto-themed Cornbread, Earl and Me, which he describes as “another tragic tale that ends up being quite triumphant in the end.” Shortly after came a landmark part for the 14-year-old in the ultimate feel-bad flick, Apocalypse Now. After two infamously grueling years spent in the jungle in production of the Francis Ford Coppola epic—“I had been cute with perfect, smooth brown skin, and then I got to the Philippines where my skin went haywire and I grew six inches in six months,” Fishburne recalls—he and his mother moved to Los Angeles to further his burgeoning career.
        There, after amassing a résumé filled with guest star spots on TV dramas and roles in films like The Cotton Club and The Color Purple, the determined 20-something thespian landed a job, unpredictably, on one of the silliest of shows. Paul Reubens’ CBS Saturday morning Pee-wee’s Playhouse fitted Fishburne in pink jeans, lavender chaps and a long, Jheri curl wig. To date his only comedy role, kid-friendly Cowboy Curtis provided “an opportunity for me to do something that was completely lighthearted and campy,” the imposing actor says, laughing as he exposes the frivolous side of the man once billed as Larry Fishburne. “I appreciate good camp when I run into it.”

FROM LARRY TO LAURENCE
By his 30s, Fishburne was back to the heavy stu, with roles growing longer and more complex—as was his first name. Beginning with the 1993 Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It, the former Larry was now Laurence. It was, the actor says, an expression of his true, maturing self. “When I was young, I was a Larry,” Fishburne says. “And I was very happy being a Larry. There are wonderful things about Larry. My performance in King of New York—that was a Larry performance. And so was Deep Cover.” But then, he notes, there was “a demarcation point,” marked by a divorce from his first wife and sudden leaps in his career. “My parents always called me Laurence, as did my first wife, because all of those people are familiar with me at my core,” the actor explains. And just before that ultimately Oscar-nominated turn as Ike Turner, Fishburne had been appearing on Broadway in August Wilson’s play Two Trains Running, for which he won a Tony award in 1992. His costar and mentor, the late Roscoe Lee Browne, also insisted on calling him by his full first name.
        “I became accustomed to hearing someone say my name with great love and affection,” he says of Browne. “And I thought, ‘This is a good way for me to come into my manhood and really express the fullness of my identity.’ But what’s hilarious, and sometimes a little frustrating, is that people think it’s some kind of high-minded thing, like I’m taking myself too seriously. It’s not about taking myself seriously at all. It’s about being who I am.”
        And who Laurence was, it had also become apparent after his breakthrough role in 1991’s urban tale Boyz n the Hood, was a bankable box office star. Inspired by idols like Sidney Poitier, James Earl Jones and Gregory Hines, Fishburne says he had always dared to dream of a career as a leading man. “But I just didn’t know if and when it was going to happen,” he admits. “The way I think that I was finally able to really make the leap was when I asked myself the question, ‘If you don’t become a leading man, will you be satisfied just to be a working actor?’ Once I answered yes to that, I was able to surrender to whatever the universe had in store for me. If that meant leading man, great. And if it didn’t, great. Because at least I had the ability to raise my family, pay my bills and meet my responsibilities.”

FROM LAURENCE TO LANGSTON
From that point in the early ’90s onward, film roles, like that of the Messianic computer hacker Morpheus in the lucrative Matrix trilogy, have not only helped to feed the Fishburnes but have also enabled Laurence to nurture a flourishing stage career. In fact, just last summer the actor was at the Booth Theatre on Broadway portraying the title character—former Supreme Court Justice Marshall—in a grueling five-month run of George Stevens’ one-man play Thurgood when executive producers Carol Mendelsohn and Naren Shankar recruited him to join the team at CSI.
        With the departure of their series’ lead, William Petersen, the producers had brainstormed about his possible replacement, with Fishburne at the top of their list. “Naren and I sat down and said, ‘Don’t even think about whether it’s realistic. If we can have anyone in the world, who do we want?’ ” Mendelsohn remembers. “And we said, ‘Laurence Fishburne.’ Sometimes there’s just magic, and sometimes things are meant to be, because they actually work out.”
        “We’re a show that spends a lot of time thinking. We don’t blow stuff up, and we’re not about chasing people down and shooting people,” Shankar adds. “And so the quality we were looking for in our new character was a deep intelligence. If you look at Mr. Fishburne’s work, he’s always brought that sensibility to what he’s done. It was a perfect fit for CSI.” For his part, Fishburne says he had always thought about doing television—at some point in the more distant future, perhaps during some career slowdown in his 50s. But like a dedicated forensic investigator staking out a suspect, CSI showed up early. And although he has known Petersen for years, and had heard his friend talk glowingly about the show, Fishburne had, at the time he agreed to meet with Mendelsohn and Shankar, never actually seen CSI. But after wooing him in New York, Mendelsohn and Shankar sent the actor a handpicked set of episodes on DVD. “The shows were really engaging and wonderful,” Fishburne says. “And kind of dark and moody—like a lot of the work I’ve been involved in. And I thought, ‘Wow, this will work!’ ”

ENTERING LAS VEGAS
From its beginning, says Mendelsohn, CSI has always fostered a tradition of collaboration between producers and crew, and between actors and writers. So immediately she and Shankar sat down with their new lead to flesh out the new character of Ray Langston—named, as is Fishburne’s 22-year-old son, after poet and civil rights advocate Langston Hughes. The resulting back story, which has been unveiled in the latter half of this season, reveals Dr. Langston to have once been a research pathologist who realized only too late that his own hospital had become the hunting grounds of a serial killer.
        Langston’s resulting book about the murders, In Front of My Eyes, became a best-seller. But the negative publicity it brought upon the hospital, and the strain it wrought on his personal life, cost him both job and family. Thus humbled by failure, the doctor has become a traveling lecturer and professor by the time Petersen’s Gil Grissom catches one of his talks at Vegas’ local university. As depicted in Fishburne’s first episode last December, Langston accepts Grissom’s resulting job offer to join the team—even though its CSI-1 pay grade amounts to starting his career over.
        And so too through Langston, CSI can start a new in an exciting and refreshing direction, Mendelsohn explains. We the audience can see through his fresh set of eyes how to process a fingerprint, how to collect evidence, even what to wear to a crime scene.
        Langston provides “a way for the audience to experience everything they experienced with the show all over again, with a fresh perspective. It’s almost like a beginning,” Fishburne muses. “And I think it’s a really great place to start. Here’s a guy who has a lot of experience in one area, pathology, and no experience practicing in another area, forensics—even though they’re related. What has been nice is that it gives the writers great emotional territory to explore, and gives me some wonderful stuff to play.”
        As with the chemicals in the show’s Vegas lab, the combination of new character Langston with new-to-the-cast actor Fishburne has brought about a powerful reaction. CBS’ entertainment president, Nina Tassler, for one, is impressed with the results. “It was a huge coup to cast Laurence Fishburne—we were just thrilled,” Tassler remembers. “And he is doing a fantastic job. He brings humor and weight to the role. He is both formidable and generous as an actor, and it’s easy to see why he’s a big star.”

READY TO PLAY
A few months before his CSI debut, on a conference call with the nation’s TV critics in October, one African-American reporter asked Fishburne about the significance of TV’s top drama boasting a black lead. Back then, Fishburne admitted he hadn’t thought much about it, as he was so focused on his upcoming work.
        Now in January, with the country’s first African-American president in the White House, Fishburne is on Stage 25 in front of an assembly of the nation’s TV critics. And he has an answer.
        First of all, he notes, downplaying any social significance to Langston, there’s Dennis Haysbert on The Unit, and Hill Harper on CSI: NY. “The good news is that I was asked to join this company because of my gifts as an actor, and for that I’m extremely grateful,” he adds. “The fact that I happen to be a man of color is, I like to think, a bonus—in much the way that it is for our president. He is intelligent, capable and engaging. He brings people together. And he happens to be an African-American. But I think it is his intelligence and passion, his compassion as a human being, that will make him a great president. So I’m going to try to be a great leading man here. To do that I’ll bring all of my humanity, and hope that that reflects well on the show.”
        Facing the room full of critics, Fishburne is visibly at ease, and waves off any question of him being possibly stressed about joining a close-knit cast on a show already in progress. “I was invited to come here,” he reminds one reporter. “I have been welcomed warmly, and have tried to do what I can to blend in harmoniously.”
        Having worked with a few of his new castmates before on other projects, he says, helps. And so, too, does the right attitude. “The most important thing for me to remember is not to mistake my presence for the event,” he says modestly. “The event is CSI the show, and everyone has a responsibility to bring their unique talents to it. And that’s what I’m going to do. This character has a lot of internal conflict, and my goal is to take him and make him fully human.”
        In the meanwhile, the actor is enjoying the fullness of his own life. He and wife Gina Torres—who coincidentally once appeared on CSI, in a Season 4 episode titled “XX”—live in Los Angeles with their toddler daughter, Delilah, and Fishburne’s 18-year-old daughter, Montana, from his first marriage. “We love where we live, and life is beautiful,” he says in a deep, booming voice that belies the mellow sentiment. “I’m just home and living life and working. And I’m coming to work with people who are wonderful, who have made great television for nine years. That’s a gift. I’m excited, and I’m ready to play.”