Once upon a time, Gary Dourdan was amongst the ranks of struggling actors vying for screen time wherever he might find it. Fatefully, hard work, perseverance, and cautious choices have worked in his favor. With a professional resume spanning just over a decade, he has emerged as a vision of prime time, mainstream success. And damnied if he's not up in a TV Guide commercial, to boot.
Dourdan's story originates in Philadephia where he began honing his craft at the renowned Freedom Theater. After making the two-hour pilgrimage to New York to settle, for a few, he continued his studies and put his chops to use. While doing time in "bad theater" on the off-Broadway stage, he also began shuffling between the east and the left coasts. By 1991, he would saunter onto the small screen, hair flowing, as the jive-talking, career student, Shazza Zulu, on "Different World". Two seasons later, he entered the world of film, in bit parts, and then lent a helping hand to Sigourney Weaver in the good fight against foreign beings in Alien: Resurrection. More film and television work followed, as did a shift in momentum which ultimately led him to ponder his spirituality and shear his trademark dreadlocks.
Dourdan resurfaced on television in the Muhammad Ali biopic, "King of the World" as Malcolm X, a role he credits as a career highlight. He went on to headline the cast of the indie film, Trois, which just might go down in cult classic history, maybe. Turning his attention to cable television, he effortlessly assumed recurring roles on Showtime's "Beggars and Choosers" as well as "Soul Food", the latter which featured him as a less-than-stellar law enforcer by the name of Jack Van Adams.
Since 2000, Dourdan has been blessing prime time audiences with his valiant portrayal of Warrick Brown, a gifted, yet troubled Crime Scene Investigator. Alongside the efforts of his co-stars -Marg Helenberger, William Petersen, and Jorga Fox, among them- "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" sat atop the ratings during the 2000-2001 season and has garnered nominations for Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG Awards. This year, Dourdan, himself, took home an NAACP Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.
One day following the Emmys and three days prior to the fourth season premiere of "CSI", he strolls into the photographer's studio sporting shades, in need of a double espresso. Venice sat down with Dourdan, who, coincidentally, is a gracious local resident, to pick his brain about the reciprocal relationship between artistic growth and creative energy and to his dismay, that film that just won't go away. It's surely cliché by now, but the first thing one notices about Gary Dourdan are his eyes, which appear even more pronounced against the backdrop of his button-down shirt of identical hue. Similar to a mood ring, engaged, the windows to his soul seem to shift in tone between blue and green...and then back again. He is both proud and humbled to admit that he's still a work in progress and looks forward to his evolution as a creative conduit, regardless of the medium. Needless to say, Gary Dourdan is kinda deep.
You're about to embark on "CSI's" fourth season. To date we have seen Warrick Brown battle a gambling problem that he's tried , unsuccessfully, to hide from his co-workers. What can we expect to see this time around?
"I don't know what the writer's were eating over the summer, but they were definitely ambitious with the storylines this season. Our first show is almost like a movie-it's two hours long and it's broken up into a "to be continued" kind of vibe. We have just finished a show called "invisible Evidence" which features Warrick up on the stand. His evidence is eventually thrown out and [as a result] he has to run around with Grissom for 24 hours to retrieve more [proof] so they can close the case. We're working on a ticking clock and it's a really good episode. There are some really well-written shows this season."
Tell us your experience portraying an A/V specialist.
"I'm really into electronics anyway, so I like that they throw that element into my character every now and then. Actually, they spread out the techniques among all of our characters so we each have skill in many different areas. So, there might be one show when I'm in the A/V lab and then there's another show when I'm at the coroner's office. I think they're trying to show the versatility of the characters and that we're all competent in doing our jobs, which is pretty true to detail. There might be a fella who works in ballistics, but he'll also have a lot of knowledge abut DNA as well. Crime scene investigators have to know a great deal to do their jobs."
Looking over your resume, you seem to have gracefully graduated from the "dreadlock'd guy" to portray characters ranging from an alien fighter(Alien: Resurrection), Janet Jackson's past love interest ("Again" music video), a shady cop("Soul Food") to a Crime Scene Investigator. How do you know if a role is right or wrong, for you?
"Well, it used to be that any role was right for me,[laughs] coming from New York, I was acting to survive and pay the rent. I was doing theater, little movies and student films and also, working in bars and clubs-doing anything I could get my hands on. At the time, the advice that I got from many directors and actors was, "Just keep working," Then again, [as an actor] you have to learn about the discipline, too. In Hollywood, it's not just about the discipline of the work itself as much as it is about decision-making. Sometimes you have to say no to a job because it's not right for you.
"After a while, you learn that once you've built a body of work, you don't have to take just any role that comes around. If you get a little money in the bank, then you have a choice to take a role or not and you to take roles that you feel are right for you. So it's a heavy discipline. You see it in great actors like Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro - they have the discipline to say no to something and then they'll wait around for something right to come along. I'm learning that discipline as I get older."
Well, you know we have to talk about Trois, right?
"No, we really don't have to talk about that." [laughs]
Oh, come on! It started out as this small, independent film and then all of a sudden, everybody was talking about it. Did you ever think it would become such a topic of conversation?
"A lot of people still come up to me and say,"God, I loved that film, Trois," and I certainly have to question [the character of] that human being. [laughs] It was a fantastic script and I wanted to get with these young filmmakers from Atlanta and Philadelphia. The story was a great mixture of Indecent Proposal and Fatal Attraction and I was looking to do something outside of the box that I was in. I wanted to try something unconventional with a gripping storyline.
It's funny because I did a great film called New Jersey Turnpikes, which co-starred Kelsey Grammer and Orlando Jones, but no one ever saw it because it was never released. But you do a film like Trois, and the whole world sees it. Even my boss saw it. She said to me, "I was watching TV late one night and I saw this film- what was that, a porn or something, honey?" She signs my paycheck, so I was like, 'Oh well, you know we all gotta start somewhere...'
So, what do you think went wrong?
"It was about the execution, Not everyone has the same experience when it comes to lighting, wardrobe, and even setting up a shot the way you're used to having it done- these are things you learn along the way. We had a lot of arguments on the set because I tend to get pretty vocal about what I like. I am studying directing right now so that I can stop all this talking because no one likes to listen to actors anyway. But these days, we have a lot more to say and the power to say it because we're just coming out of the "do-it-yourself" '90s- actors are directing their own projects and starring in them. We used to be just work-for-hire, but it's a different time we're living in now.
I interviewed Debbie Allen a while back and she told me that you caught her eye while she was walking down the street in Paris. Did you have any idea at the time that that meeting would act as the launching pad for your career?
"Debbie Allen is an amazing woman with boundless energy. I don't know where she gets it! She continues to wow me with the amount of work that she's doing. When I met her, I had no idea [what would materialize]. It wasn't until I got back to New York that I realized that I had a nice contact out in L.A. She just felt like family and I made sure I kept in touch with her. At the time, I was doing very bad theater in New York and after I met her in Paris, I would send her tapes of my bad work. After about a year, she said she was going to write something in for me and she created that character [Shazza on "A Different World"].
I used to just follow her around and see that she had such grace and energy. At one time, I was scared because I thought [her husband] Norm wanted to beat me up. [laughing] I love them both so much; they're such champions to me."
