Jorja Fox’s Sara Sidle Casting Ironically Insults The Entire Cast
As it turns out, a beloved character from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was cast for reasons that don’t sound like much of a confidence builder for the actual cast themselves. In the wake of its quarter-century anniversary, there’s been a lot of room for reflection concerning the 25-year history of the CSI franchise. Naturally, that includes the series’ ever-changing cast.
For instance, regardless of feelings toward Laurence Fishburne or Ted Danson as actors, Gil Grissom leaving CSI ruined the show for many fans who found him irreplaceably iconic. But Grissom is far from the only fan-favorite character in the franchise, and it’s another of CSI’s best characters whose addition to the series was based on a truly bizarre casting choice.
Jorja Fox’s Sara Sidle Was Added To CSI Because Chandra West’s Holly Gribbs Was “Too Attractive”
At Least One Unnamed Producer Couldn’t Buy Holly As A Forensic Investigator
For CSI’s 25th anniversary, creator Anthony Zuiker fielded interviews about the history of the show. When asked why Jorja Fox was cast as CSI’s Sara Sidle, Zuiker explained that Fox was added after it was decided that Holly Gribbs actor Chandra West looked too good for the role. Zuiker credits the choice to a specific producer, who he leaves unnamed:
“[Sara] was born the second Chandra got fired. The whole Chandra of it all was challenging because we brought her in for casting for names that shall go unnamed who are making decisions. And this individual said, ‘What is this, Playboy? Is someone this good-looking going to really be a CSI?’ And that individual got their back up pretty bad. Anyway, we try to bring her back and we kind of try to dirty her up and not make her as attractive and brought her back again with our other actresses. And she still got hired, but it was still an ax to grind with who said yes for Chandra.”
It was diplomatic to leave the producer in question unnamed, as it raises serious questions about the rest of the show’s casting choices. Firing an actor for being attractive implies that wasn’t a concern for Fox, which seems like it would be deeply insulting for an actor to learn. At best, it implies the producer considered Fox plain or generic.
Furthermore, it implies that this was never a concern for the rest of the cast, either. In fairness to the unnamed producer, Zuiker’s story never actively suggests the producer said the main cast was unpleasant to look at. Nonetheless, when a person’s job is to appear onscreen, it’s certainly easy to imagine them processing the producer’s remarks in that way.
This line of thinking also echoes real-life complaints among men and women in various “smart” professions who claim that their looks have hindered their ability to be taken seriously on multiple occasions. There’s no causal relationship between a person’s looks and their intelligence, yet the line of thinking apparently involved in West’s firing risks perpetuating that rather unfortunate public perception.
Chandra West’s Firing Furthers The Irony By Mirroring Her Exact CSI Pilot Storyline
They Both Had Bosses Who Wanted Them Gone On Their Very First Day
Holly’s death in CSI episode 2 after Jim Brass spent the pilot trying to push her off the team was an even colder move than CSI: Vegas ending on a cliffhanger, but Zuiker’s account draws a parallel between Brass and the unnamed producer. Like Gribbs, it seems West was only given one shot at the job before producers opened fire:
“So we brought her back for the pilot. She did a nice job, and then we got the direction, ‘Get rid of her.’ So that’s why I had her killed in ‘Cool Change,’ episode 2. And that firing allowed us to hire Jorja Fox.”
West obviously survived her firing, and she even went on to star in other procedurals such as NYPD Blue and Played. Her most recent role at the time of writing was as an FBI agent in Chicago PD. Nonetheless, setting her up as an apparent secondary protagonist only to kill her immediately seems worse than denying her the job outright.
It’s very Game of Thrones, particularly since Gribbs had a seemingly important role to play in the overarching narrative at the time she was killed. Zuiker addresses this as well, explaining that Gribbs was essentially meant as the audience insert character, introducing us to oddball Grissom through the eyes of someone who also finds this insect-eating man’s demeanor slightly off-kilter:
“She was the vehicle for the audience. She was the way into the show. She comes in first day of work, she goes, talks to Grissom, she eats the grasshopper. She was literally Screenwriting 101, Teleplay 101, ‘Audience, come with me. Let me introduce you to the world.’ That’s what it was. And me being a new writer in television, I fell for that trope and it was a good mechanic. In the end, I felt like if she’s new and the audience is new to forensics, what a great matchup for the audience to play along with her. But she got caught up in the politics of casting, and it worked out for us in the end, but she kind of got a raw deal.”
The fact that West was not only denied the chance to join one of the best CSI teams in the franchise, but also that her character had a valid reason for being kept on the show, doubles down on the fact that her looks were truly the only reason she was axed. And the greatest irony becomes clearer with hindsight.
CSI Killing Holly Gribbs Did Nothing To Change Perceptions Of The Show’s Characters
They Were Still Criticized As Being Too Young And Attractive For The Job
As viewers who regularly talked about the show with others might recall, conversations about the cast’s looks didn’t die with Holly Gribbs. Based on personal experience from checking off my college science credit in 2009, I can personally attest that the first day of Forensics 101 at a prominent California college began with a PowerPoint “debunking” the CSI cast’s attractiveness.
It didn’t help that priorities at CBS appeared to shift over the years. The show that murdered Holly for being too pretty went on to cast Ted Danson, a man People would later spotlight in their 2018 Sexiest Man Alive issue (albeit not as the main feature). Had West’s casting merely been delayed a few years, Gribbs might have survived.
But looks are subjective, and a related yet more objective criticism of CSI’s best forensic investigators is that many characters appear too young to be experts in their field. Yet the actors playing later recruits like Morgan Brody and Riley Adams were a full thirteen years younger than those who played original mainstays Nick Stokes and Warrick Brown.
Chandra West, meanwhile, was only four years younger. If she were fired so that CSI: Crime Scene Investigation could skirt forensic inaccuracies in cop shows, that mission didn’t last long. In the end, the likely inadvertent yet completely avoidable implications about the rest of the cast’s appearance simply never served as much purpose as Zuiker’s unnamed producer apparently thought.
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