It’s official: Another cast member from the original CSI run is returning for the sequel.
Marg Helgenberger will be a series regular in Season 2 of CSI: Vegas, according to Deadline. Her deal is for one year. This news comes one week after it was first revealed that she could be reprising her role as Catherine Willows.
Paula Newsome (Maxine Roby), Matt Lauria (Joshua Folsom), and Mandeep Dhillon (Allie Rajan), who played the new team of CSIs in Season 1, will all be back. The only new cast member not returning is Mel Rodriguez, who played the medical examiner, Hugo Ramirez.
Season 1 also featured the returns of William Petersen and Jorja Fox as Gil Grissom and Sara Sidle, as well as Wallace Langham as David Hodges. Petersen had signed on for one year, and Fox announced her exit following the end of the season. “For me CSI has always been a love story. The story that people can find love in the darkest of places and times. And the story that love, even in the darkest of places and times, can expand and grow roots and endure. I personally just can’t split Sara and Grissom up again. So goes Grissom…So goes Sara. Wherever they go, they belong together,” she explained in a series of tweets on January 25.
When it came to whether Season 2 would feature other original characters, showrunner Jason Tracey told TV Insider after the finale, “certainly a lot of our new folks will be coming back and we’re blessed to have a really incredible deep bench and fascinating cast of characters that populated the original series and different iterations of the show. There were phenomenal actors that brought some really interesting characters to life in Miami, in New York, Cyberas well. Anthony Zuiker, who created this franchise, maintains a pretty fantastic rolodex of all those actors. We’re going to get in the writers’ room and figure out where we can take it, who we can invite to come play.”
Helgenberger was a series regular on the original CSI for 12 seasons, then returned for guest spots after her exit. Her TV credits also include All Rise (to which she’ll return in a recurring capacity in Season 3, picked up by OWN), Under the Dome, and Intelligence.
CSI: Vegas, Season 2, TBA, CBS
