Jorja Fox “(on Billy Petersen leaving the show for four weeks in November of 2006)” I wasn’t disappointed at all, I think, you know, obviously as I met Billy he had come almost directly out of this excitement of theater he was doing in Chicago and he’s very famous for that theater that he’s done. I think that it’s been the heart of his work over the time of his career, he’s done some films that are ground-breaking and memorable and everybody, those, that’s probably the way that the most people know Billy Petersen, but I think that people who know Billy Petersen “know” that his heart and his soul has always been in the theater, so, and it’s almost as if in a sense odd that it took him six years to find his way into one, you know, and I think that it’s a testament to the show, how much “CSI:” has all this passion that he hasn’t felt like he could go do a play at the same time. Cause he’s also fairly multi-faceted, much more so than I am and I think some of us are on the show.

[…]

Jorja Fox From the very beginning of the inception of my character coming on to the pro- the show of “CSI:” and them deciding to add this character, there’s this little piece of paper that you get when you go to audition for these roles, and, and , I think the first sentence said ’love interest for Grissom’. So from like day one of me kind of going for the audition this was a story that hung there in the ethers and then, you know, as we started to go into season 1 and season 2 and started to realize that we were going to have a season 3 I think there was interest on everybody’s part not to, so to speak, ‘blow our wad’ too soon, you know “(laughs)”. You tell this story then where do you go from there and it could be, you know, if we were lucky enough which it “seemed” might be happening, there’d be years of awkwardness after the break-up or stuff that you know “(laughs)” we didn’t want to play for three seasons. So I think that it, it was kind of wise to hold back on it and, and then we got to a point where we thought that maybe the fans were not interested in it any more.

[…]

Jorja Fox “(voiceover)” We’d already begun shooting the last episode of season 6, the script had been out, there was an ending set, and I got a call from Carol Mendelsohn suggesting ‘hey, what do you think about this and would you want to do this’ and is this interesting to you. Which is also something that’s great about this show and I think very unique is I don’t know how often actors get those calls. I was shocked, very surprised, and, and, and very very intrigued. I thought it could make season 7 extremely interesting for my character and certainly a storyline that I had always been gearing up to play and wanted to play, and I’ve always loved the dynamic between Grissom and Sara, I love that it’s a “little” bit sort of scandalous, it’s untraditional in, in a couple of respects, and I love those kinds of love stories. So… I was thrilled.

[…]

Jorja Fox It’s a complete and utter shock and surprise. First of all I can’t believe it’s been seven years. One of the reasons I “hate” doing interviews like this is ‘cause I’m reminded that it’s been seven years, “(laughs)” because it doesn’t feel like seven years. It’s like ‘yeah, a couple of years’, you know, it’s the coolest thing ever, I never could have even wished for this, to be a part of a show this long and never would have expected that it would ever happen and I can’t believe that it has, in many respects, we still have a gazillion cool stories left to tell. So… yeah, it’s pretty weird.