Ellen Gray: 'C.S.I.'s' Fishburne is getting a makeover

PASADENA, Calif. - It's not exactly "What Not to Wear," but Laurence Fishburne's character on CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" is headed for "a little bit of a wardrobe makeover," according to the network's entertainment president.

In talking with fans about the show, which the actor joined last season as a doctor and college professor who decides to become a crime scene investigator, Nina Tassler told members of the Television Critics Association Monday, CBS learned that "they really like Fishburne and respect him - they just want to see him a little more comfortable in his clothes."

Pressed for details, Tassler said, "I think what you're looking for is wardrobe that reflected him being more comfortable in his environment. I mean, he came as an outsider coming in, so his clothes - you know, he was in suits, he was a little stiff, he wore his glasses."

In the coming season, "you'll see him in his, you know, CSI garb," she said. "His glasses aren't on. He's much more relaxed, much more comfortable."

Comfort's the key in Tassler's mind.

"You know, he's a father figure much in the way Gil Grissom was, where people would seek Gil out, because he had a certain air of expertise," she said. Fishburne's character, Dr. Raymond Langston, is "more comfortable in the lab . . . His whole perspective is from a medical point of view."

Losing the suits and glasses isn't a character shift, Tassler insisted. Before he was new, but "now he's been there, so he's more comfortable."

Fans of ABC's "Eli Stone," which aired its final episode last month, aren't the only ones missing the show about the lawyer who might also be a prophet.

Star Jonny Lee Miller, who resumes his British accent in two upcoming projects for PBS' "Masterpiece," "Endgame" and "Emma," expressed disappointment Sunday about the show's cancellation.

"We were quite confident that we were going to be picked up. We felt that we had a really good shot," he said, following a session for "Endgame," where he portrays the man behind a series of secret negotiations in England that helped lay the groundwork for the end of apartheid in South Africa.

When producers learned the show wouldn't be renewed, "we were only going to go to 13 [episodes], so they tried to tie up the story lines they had in a way that would give the series some closure . . . so it was kind of a rush to change those final scripts," Miller said.

The actor said he was "not in a hurry" to do another series, and not just because of the 70-hour workweeks.

"It's also when you work so hard on something and you have such a great time and you become a family and you get to know the people you're working with, spend more time with them than you do with your own family, quite frankly - that's the crew, not the other actors - and then for it just to be taken away and for them to pull the rug from under you like that . . . You put so much effort in, and then someone makes this decision, and it all goes away," Miller said. "And you feel aggrieved by that, actually, feel angry, and, you know, feel very, very sad."

But then, he added, "all of the sudden you find yourself doing something else and you're enjoying that tremendously and wouldn't be doing that if I was stuck in a room at Disney, you know?"

Working on a series "made a difference to me in that having worked in that scenario, and having worked on a character for that long, I really feel a certain confidence in my abilities in that environment," he said. "I really, really enjoyed playing it every day. You know, I thought I would get bored a lot quicker, and I didn't at all. I really, really loved it."

In a new CBS show co-creator Robert King said he and his wife and co-creator Michelle King, began writing a year ago, "when you could still go hiking on the Appalachian Trail and not snicker," (remember S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford?) Julianna Margulies plays "The Good Wife," a woman who discovers that her marriage isn't quite what she thought it was when her district attorney husband's caught in a very public sex scandal.

Chris Noth ("Law & Order," "Sex and the City") plays the not-so-good husband, who's on the receiving end of what looks like a pretty hard slap in the show's pilot.

Asked "Did you really whop him?" Margulies replied, "I did. There was no other way to do it."

Noth, she said, told her not to worry, " 'Oh, please - I've been hit so many times.' So we did it three times. The first time I didn't hit him hard enough, OK? The second time . . . the camera was off. And the third time was perfect."

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