INTERVIEW: Pam Veasey Pam Veasey Credits Best known for: CSI: NY (Executive Producer/Co-Executive Producer/Writer) 2004–2012 Ringer (Executive Producer/Writer) 2011–2012 The District (Executive Producer/Co-Executive Producer/Supervising Producer/Writer) 2000–2004 In Living Color (Executive Producer/Co-Producer/Writer) 1991–1996 Emmy Nominated (Individual Achievement in Writing in a Variety or Music Program) 1992 Emmy Nominated (Writing in a Variety or Music Program) 1991 Nash Bridges 1996 Martial Law (Producer/Writer) 1998–1999 Gimme a Break (Writer) 1986–1987 NL: So you run CSI: New York, but you didn’t create the show? You’ve been on this one since… PV: Right. I’ve been on since the beginning. I was not here when they did the crossover with CSI: Miami to get the show picked up. CSI: NY didn’t have a traditional pilot. Gary Sinise and Melina Kanakaredes joined an episode of CSI: Miami and then CSI: NY was picked up. I joined the show right after that as the first season began. NL: Did you come in as a co-executive producer? PV: Yes, I was thrilled. I was working as an EP/showrunner on The District with Craig T. Nelson [as Chief Jack Mannion], and they said, “Do you want to go over to New York?” And, I thought, “Great. I need a break. I’ll just be a writer.” And then, two years later, I was running the show. NL: And now you’re going into production on your ninth season? PV: Ninth season. I know. Knock wood. It’s such a blessing. We’ve been two years on the bubble [in danger of cancellation]. The first year we made it through. We thought we would. But, last year, we were not sure. It was really close, so we had to go in and pitch and tell them what our plans were for the ninth season and really fight for our show to come back. And we succeeded. NL: When you go into CBS and say, “This is our plan for the season,” how much detail are you giving them? Because they know the basic franchise of the show: there’s going to be a crime and the team is going to investigate it. And they’re probably going to solve it, so there will be a happy conclusion because it’s a CBS show. There will be redemption – some sort of justice. Are the arcs going to be more personal? How is it going to be different? PV: I like to give a theme because we usually have a theme every year. We decided that this year’s theme was: “Do the unexpected in the personal lives of our characters and also in the crime stories.” Make sure there’s a credible, believable motive for the crime. That the characters make believable choices. But try to do the unexpected, so the audience goes, “Oh, okay, that’s great.” We also added an element this year where we decided we would do a day off with each of our characters throughout the season. So you’d see what they do on their day off and learn a little more about them. When you’re trying to get picked up, you bring in story ideas and what’s promotable, but you also talk about why to do a ninth season. We’re in New York City telling New York stories. But now we’re also going to take the audience into our characters’ personal lives where they can learn something unexpected about them. NL: That’s why people tune in every week. It’s to connect to your characters and what their unique perspectives will be on the case. When you’re breaking story, what makes a worthy A story? Is it that the case will not only be cool with interesting science and mysterious twists and turns, but that it will also bring out new aspects of the characters? How do you decide? PV: We have a lot of requirements for a worthy A story: Is it heroic? Can we surprise the audience with the story? But the plots must always evoke some kind of emotion either from the victim in the story, the killer in the story, or from our team. What is the prevalent emotion that’s going to hook the audience and make them feel something at the end of the hour. We want our audience to have a conversation about what they’ve just watched. If it’s something we feel is one-sided, and everyone will say, “Oh, yeah, I expected that.” Then, it’s not the story we want to do. We want people to say, “Well, I agree with that person or I actually sympathize with the killer’s motive” or “I enjoyed watching that” or “I was surprised it took that turn.” NL: I think it starts off right away with the very first episode when Gary Sinise as the Mac Taylor character sees the wedding ring on the victim and he says, “Somebody’s wife is missing.” And, right away, it creates the stakes. PV: It does, it does. Obviously, when we first met Mac, he was single, having had his wife Claire die in 9/11. You know he’s experienced loss. It’s something that makes him heroic and very understanding for all people who have lost family members in crimes – or have been violated in some way. He understands needing answers, getting closure. NL: That is such a beautiful speech he has about the beach ball. PV: Anthony Zuiker, of course, the creator [of CSI: NY], wrote that. He talks about what he could keep of his wife and that inside that beach ball was her breath. NL: So it’s unexpected and poetic and everybody can relate to it. One of the things that I ultimately say to students who are writing not just crime stories, but stories with a lot of violence, is: “Make the body count – count.” It’s something that you do very well. Every life has a value and it’s not just, “Oh, here’s another case.” PV: We’re so conscious of that – particularly if you take a story that’s been in the news. We’re not quite “ripped from the headlines” as Law & Order is and used to be. But you want to tell a story that evokes – again, emotion. I also teach at USC in the Cinema School, so I know what you’re talking about. And, I always say to my students: “With every story you must have hope. I don’t care how dark it is, there has to be a thread of hope – whether it’s hope that your bad guy turns himself in, whether it’s hope that we solve a case, whether it’s hope that a relationship works out.” And they’re like, “How can I find it in such a dark story?” And I say, “You have to – you have to find something to hold onto. That somewhere in this thread, there is hope.” Even hope that we capture the bad guy, but there’s got to be something that propels the viewer forward, if they’re going to spend an hour they should get something out of it. It may surprise them how we get there – it may surprise them what we say – it may surprise them who the killer is, but they’re hoping that that piece of science in act two turns out to be something. They’re hoping they can laugh. Our fans are huge on hoping on relationships, when Melina [Kanakaredes] was here – will Gary [Sinise] and Melina get together? Now that Sela [Ward] is a part of the show – is there something there with that? An audience finds a way to hope for something. They were so into that Danny [Carmine Giovinazzo] and Lindsay [Anna Belknap] when we first hinted at that relationship. NL: I was thinking about how durable the CSI shows are and especially with New York because there’s so much chaos. For my last book, I interviewed Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote Se7en which is set in New York, and we talked about the metronome that the Somerset character (Morgan Freeman) sets every night. I asked him what that meant, and he said, “In a city that’s so chaotic with sirens and babies crying and cars honking, it’s the one thing Somerset can control.” And it seems like the CSI shows, and especially CSI: New York, create some sense of order out of chaos. That somebody is going to actually come in, and they’re going to clean up the mess. Because stylistically, it’s very slick – you’ve got all of those great CSI shots, the music… PV: When you’re the third of the franchise, you have to include the forensics and all those things that Anthony Zuiker imagined as he created CSI, but you have to ask yourself, “How do you sell New York? How are we not like Miami and not like Vegas?” And for us, it was making New York City a character. I always say to my guest directors who come in that we have to reflect the city. Our shows are very dense – there’s a lot going on, there are a lot of layers – New York is like that. You can’t walk down the street without bumping into somebody. If you stand on a corner – and I always use the Blue Fin restaurant in Times Square as an example, from storefront door to the curb, there are a thousand things going on.