'CSI' Star: No Big Deal I May Lose Job
In a cliffhanger episode Thursday night, Capt. Jim Brass is shot while trying to negotiate with a gunman holding a hostage. Brass' life hangs in the balance as the episode ends.
But that doesn't seem to concern Paul Guilfoyle, the actor who plays Brass, all that much.
On The Early Show Friday, Paul Guilfoyle
Chen wondered how Guilfoyle first found out Brass would wind up in the line of fire.
"I tend to read the scripts as soon as they come out, and ..."
Chen interrupted him, asking whether the show's producers had called him to alert him of what was about to happen.
"Well, you know what? they did," Guilfoyle responded. "… I got a call from the producers. But I, I being the kind of guy I am, I, I read the scripts very quickly. I like to find out what's going on, just to see what's, uh, happening. And, uh, so I had read the scripts, but I got a very good call from the producers saying, 'Hey, we want you to know that, you know, you're going to be shot, you know,' and, uh, I said, 'Oh? Great, you know, I know that!' "
It wasn't the first time Guilfoyle has played a man who's been shot, and he says each time the character's reaction has been the same: "You really can't believe it, that, that somebody shot you and that it's happening to you, that you're, 'cause there's a certain, I guess the word that most people say when they're shot isn't 'Mom' or, or, uh, or 'Julie' or it, it's, um, 'No!' "
If this really is the end of Brass, Guilfoyle says the character might have no one but himself to blame.
"I think the good thing about the character that I like about him," Guilfoyle said, "is that he operates from a place of kind of honesty, of authenticity and honesty, and he sometimes makes other people do the same thing. And … a few times he's wrong, like all of us."
There's one more cliffhanger in store for CSI fans in next week's season finale.