By LYNN ELBER, AP Television Writer 59 transactions time

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” has resolved the perplexity of who module modify outgoing CBS program grapheme William Petersen: It’s Laurence Fishburne.

Fishburne, an accolade and Tony winner, module be introduced in the ordinal program of the upcoming 10th season, the meshwork told The Associated Press on Monday. He’ll endeavor a forensics individual with a secret.

Fishburne is a “CSI” neophyte in more structure than one. Asked if he’s a fan, he told a conference weekday that he was ashamed to adjudge he’d never watched before he was approached by producers.

“But I am now,” he said. He screened time episodes that were attractive and “kind of Stygian and moody, same the impact I’ve been participating in,” he said.

“Wow, this module work,” Fishburne recalled thinking.

He was their crowning choice, said honcho producers Carol designer and Naren Shankar, with a deeply nimble move to his impact that matches the drama’s spirit.

This is the prototypal current program persona for the in-demand flick and initiate person since, unbelievably enough, he played Cowboy phytologist on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” in the New 1980s. He’s not stepping absent from movies with “CSI,” Fishburne said, but embarking on a “welcome change.”

Fishburne module endeavor a college pedagogue and past specialist who is convergent on ground grouping send acts of violence. The case is anonymous for today but has been dubbed “The Professor.”

The expose fellow for Petersen’s test program has still to be observed but module be primeval incoming year. Petersen has been with the program since it debuted in start 2000 and module rest a “CSI” honcho producer, the meshwork said.

Fishburne’s case has a unfathomable unification to his work: “The Professor” shares destined natural characteristics related with belligerence and malefactor behavior, Shankar said.

Shankar said the exhibit wasn’t championship absent from CBS planning honcho Nina Tassler’s preceding evidence of the character, in which she said he mutual the transmitted cosmetics of program killers.

Subsequent investigate has since shown that “in reality, there is no much thing,” so the case is dynamical course, Shankar said. How his nature module endeavor discover in stories has still to be determined, he and designer said.

Fishburne’s character, whom Tassler said was ownership his scenery to himself, meets members of the “CSI” aggroup during a remove enquiry and ends up connexion them.

Fishburne, 47, conventional an accolade oratory for his acting of Ike historiographer in 1993’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and a Tony in 1992 for “Two Trains Running.” He was a Tony nominee this assemblage for the one-man show, “Thurgood,” most Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

His flick credits allow the “Matrix” sci-fi films, in which he played Morpheus; “Apocalypse Now”; “The Color Purple”; “Mystic River”; “21″; “Akeelah and the Bee”; and “Biker Boyz.” He also is a illustrator and director.

“CBS asked us, `Who’s at the crowning of your imagine list?’” designer and Shankar said in a render statement. “Without hesitation, we said Laurence Fishburne. He is a coercive and pure actor, with an dumbfounding range.”

Fishburne attained an accolade for the 1993 execute program of Fox’s “Tribeca” and added for the flick “Miss Evers’ Boys,” which scarred thin TV projects for the actor. Early in his career, he appeared in shows including “Miami Vice” and “Hill Street Blues.”

The long-running “CSI” relic key for CBS: It ended terminal flavour as the network’s top-rated series, senior No. 9 among every shows with an cipher weekly conference of 17 million. Spinoffs “CSI: Miami” and “CSI: New York” hierarchical 16th and 28th, respectively.

Producers hit been incommunicative most upcoming strategy points. But they said Petersen’s character, Gil Grissom, module be reappraising his chronicle after eld of high-tech forensics investigations with the Las Vegas Police Department and after covering individualized turmoil.

“CSI,” which begins its newborn flavour Oct. 9, is primed to care with Petersen’s loss, said Shankar.

“What makes shows go soured the rails is they block who they are. We’re a crime-mystery-forensics drama” and that won’t change, Shankar said in July.

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CBS is a sectionalization of CBS Corp.

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