“‘SHE plays forensic scientist Sara Sidle in one of most successful television dramas in history.”’

Yet actress Jorja Fox, who stars in CSI: Crime Scene Invesitgation, says how she first thought no-one would watch the show, which debuted in 2000.

“I have often thought of our show really as an action-adventure show – you are going to be in for an amazing ride, an amazing hour of an exciting, dodgy, what’s-going-to-happen-next kind of ride.

To have reached 300 episodes of CSI is absolutely mind-boggling. It’s a massive number and they all take eight or nine days. The math is crazy.

When I read the first script I was blown away by it. It was so different and I hadn’t seen anything ever like it. Quincy was probably the closest thing that I could compare it to.

It’s almost like I fell under a trance and I thought: “A show about death? This is going to be cancelled in six weeks, no one is going to watch this.”

I am so thrilled that I was wrong about it, but it was an adventure.

Even though I thought it was going to be a very short one, it was an adventure that I really was excited to take.

There is this word “procedural” that I feel wasn’t really a word when we started. Law & Order came before us and they in a lot of respects were kind of a procedural show, but I don’t think the phrase had been coined until somewhere along the first or second season of CSI. It’s a genre that’s thriving to this day.

People, since time began, have loved mysteries and so in that way it’s a very, very, old concept.

But one thing that happened that was extraordinary was all this technology and stuff was bumping up against the idea of the show at the same time and I think we found ourselves at this awesome moment in history where we could tell these stories and we could do it with all these gadgets and gizmos and evolutionary things that were coming out in the real world at the same time.

Being on a successful show is the coolest thing that could ever happen to a person. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but I think I show up because I love being with the people that I get to work with every day and get to see where we are going to go together and what we are going to do.

That hasn’t changed for a minute even though the show has been through so many changes and losses. I will never give up on the idea of a musical episode. I know I have been plugging away trying to convince the producers for 14 years that we could really pull off an awesome musical, so there is that dream.

I think this show, is really about love in many ways – how through all this darkness and murk and ugliness, what really keeps these people going is love.

Love whether it’s in a friendship, love in a romantic way.

I think (my character) Sara Sidle will always pine for Grissom.”