William Petersen interview

Photo: Gilles Toucas; Photo Illustration: Jamie DiVecchio Ramsay

In January, William Petersen ended his almost-nine-year run as Gil Grissom on the hit series CSI. Since last year’s announcement of his departure, the Evanston native has returned to his first professional home: the Chicago stage. In December, he became a Steppenwolf ensemble member. Now, in David Harrower’s play Blackbird at Victory Gardens, Petersen stars as a 55-year-old man who meets a 27-year-old woman—15 years after their sexual encounter.

Time Out Chicago: The play doesn’t judge these people: Your character didn’t simply molest the young girl. Was that part of its appeal?
William Petersen: Yes. What’s great about the play is it’s impossible to go away with any answers. I don’t know if there are any answers to this dilemma in our culture, but the questions need to be raised.

TOC: What do you mean—“dilemma in our culture”?
William Petersen: I think there’s a spike in pedophilia. Part of it’s because of the Internet. Part of it may be because girls at 12 and 13 are not like I remember them at 12 and 13. And the play doesn’t just take the one side that is easiest to address: It should never happen; take them out and shoot them.

TOC: It also shows their relationship not just as pedophilic but as love.
William Petersen: Yeah, I think that’s what it is…. The human part of me feels terrible for pedophiles. I just wish they wouldn’t be ’cause it’s gotta be horrible to live like that, to know it’s wrong and be compelled to it anyway.

TOC: Pretty heavy topic—heavier than your CSI days.
William Petersen: Yeah, and much more anxiety-ridden. In CSI, you come in, you find a dead body, you don’t have to get to know the person. In this, it’s a live body, and it’s right in the room.

TOC: You feel anxiety about this role?
William Petersen: I have anxiety every day we work on it.

TOC: Do you miss anything about CSI?
William Petersen: I miss all the people. To have a cast together for that long—and for everybody to get along? Sometimes it’s hard to make it through a two-month run of a play with the same people.

TOC: Not the salary?
William Petersen: No, I don’t miss the salary.

TOC: ’Cause the reported figures…
William Petersen: Yeah, they were paying me a lot of money. You can’t take care of my dogs with what you make in the theater. But I never got into theater or movies for money. It was nice they paid you and then it was very nice they paid you a lot. But that brings a whole other set of headaches to a person’s life—money.

TOC: How’s that?
William Petersen: People look at you differently. The responsibilities are great: foundations, charity, how do we take care of our family, is this too much, not enough. You don’t change necessarily, but all those around you change towards you.

TOC: That’s what they always say about fame and money.
William Petersen: Well, it’s true.

TOC: I keep hearing about your tempestuous high-school years. What exactly did you do?
William Petersen: Nothing. I just got kicked out of a bunch of private schools. I was at Loyola Academy up in Wilmette, and I kinda got kicked out of there for some behavioral things and then—

TOC: You won’t specify?
William Petersen: Well, I got in a fight. Put it this way: I pissed the fathers off. The Jesuits.

TOC: Not girls’ fathers, then.
William Petersen: No, there were no girls; it was all boys, 1,800 guys. Then I went to Evanston High School, and they didn’t make you go to school. So I didn’t. This was ’67 through ’72; the world was changing as fast as you could imagine. I wanted to be on the road, I wanted to be a gypsy, I was ready to go at 14.

TOC: So how’d you find theater?
William Petersen: I was going to play football at Idaho State, and my GPA was so bad they put me in the theater department to get my GPA up. And I fell in love with it.

TOC: Must’ve been a shift for a jock.
William Petersen: Yeah, but I’d always loved the theater. My mother had taken me to see Sound of Music when I was ten down at the Shubert with Florence Henderson. I was, like, God, these kids are my age, and they’re singing onstage! They’re downtown! I’m stuck up in Evanston.

TOC: I get the impression that, early on, you were a player. Amy Morton called you “the young stud.”
William Petersen: That’s what theater is when you’re in your twenties. Amy Morton, in fact, said, “Your brain may know you’re acting, but your heart doesn’t.” And that has a tendency to lead to a lot of possible relationships. I certainly was enamored of a lot of actors. I still am.

Blackbird begins previews Friday 3.

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