Ted Danson Says Making ‘CSI’ Was Way Harder Than Any Comedy

Ted Danson spent more than a decade playing Sam Malone on Cheers, he happily parodied his public image on Curb Your Enthusiasm and he even found a way to believably play a bowtie-wearing demon tasked with torturing humanity for all of eternity on a network sitcom. But none of those gigs were nearly as difficult as the one that required him to pretend to investigate brutal murders on a weekly basis. 

On the most recent episode of his podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name, Danson chatted with former Saturday Night Live cast member, and star of the underrated I Love That for You, Vanessa Bayer. While Bayer’s comedy chops are clearly evident, Danson asked the actress if she had an interest in taking on more dramatic roles.

Bayer said that she did like doing drama, such as in the Netflix series Love, but wouldn’t be able to successfully audition for a role that would require her to “kick a table” and pretend to take out a gun. Danson sympathized, and admitted that the “hardest thing I did in my career was CSI.”

Which is a little surprising to hear, considering that the job seemed to mostly consist of puttering around fake crime scenes and trying on latex gloves. Danson starred in CSI for five seasons, taking over from Laurence Fishburne. Then he did two seasons of the spin-off CSI: Cyber, a show all about the world of cybercrime, made for a demographic that still uses AOL accounts. 

“It was so hard,” Danson explained. “I loved the actors, I loved the writers. I loved being able to keep a house I owned. I loved everything about CSI, but the acting was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, because there’s no room for humor. And If you take any possibility of humor away, I’m dead meat. I’m horrible. I’m not good.”

It’s true, while CSI: Miami star David Caruso at least got to make terrible puns at the expense of countless murder victims, Danson’s role was largely humorless.  

The Becker star was used to contributing comedic improvisations in projects he’d worked on prior to CSI, but such frivolities weren’t allowed at the procedural. Why? Because, according to Danson, “that would make people laugh and forget the information about the mystery that the audience wanted to have.”

The grisly CSI dialogue wore him down as well. “If I had to say ‘vaginal tear’ or ‘blood splatter’ again, I would just shoot myself,” Danson confessed. “It was just a hard form (of television) for me, I’m not good at it.”

In retrospect, CSI would have been a lot better if Danson had been allowed to be funny, and if his character had investigated all of those murders with two stoner buddies. And instead of CSI, they could have called it Bored to Death.