“I’m dead meat”: the 2011 role Ted Danson called “hardest thing I did in my career”
Having never been known for extending himself too far outside of his wheelhouse, it makes perfect sense that the role Ted Danson called the hardest of his career was one of the few that pushed him away from his comedic comfort zone.
For all we know, maybe he’s never been interested in stretching himself as a dramatic actor. He’s played it straight and gotten serious in a number of movies and TV shows over the years, right enough, but his lasting legacy will always be that of one of the defining stars of small-screen comedy.
He’s won two Primetime Emmys from 18 nominations and three Golden Globes from 12 nods, as well as receiving lifetime achievement awards from both, and with those first and last nominations being separated by 42 years, it goes without saying that Danson is one of modern television’s biggest names.
That’s not to say he can’t get serious when he needs to, as his three-season run on the episodic legal thriller Damages aptly displayed, but when all is said and done, he’ll be remembered for Cheers, Becker, and maybe even The Good Place more than his time spent sparring with Glenn Close.
After his time on Damages came to an end, Danson retreated to his sitcom safe haven, but in between Bored to Death being cancelled in 2011 and The Good Place premiering in 2016, he belatedly followed a path trodden by so many recognisable names and future stars before him by joining the ever-expanding and never-ending world of CSI.
His character, DB Russell, turned out to be the gift that kept on giving. Boarding the main series in its 12th season, Danson hung around for 84 episodes and guest-starred in a single episode of CSI: NY before ending his five-year tenure with the second and final run of CSI: Cyber.
As he quickly discovered, though, being robbed of aiming for the funny bone was a bigger challenge than he could have imagined. “It was so hard,” he 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 career, because there’s no room for humour.”
Putting an even finer point on it, Danson pointed out that “if you take any possibility of humour away, I’m dead meat; I’m horrible, I’m not good.” He’d become accustomed to studio audiences, laugh tracks, and improvisation, and with CSI taking away the tools he’d relied on for so long, the actor struggled to get to grips with not only the seriousness of the show but its dialogue.
“If I had to say ‘vaginal tear’ or ‘blood splatter’ again, I would just shoot myself,” he confessed. “It was just a hard form for me, I’m not good at it.” He was good enough to be kept around for five years, so he must have been doing something right, but it sounds like Danson spent his entire CSI era thinking he was constantly shitting the performative bed.
