Laurence Fishburne to Join CBS’ CSI

Tony Award winner Laurence Fishburne will join the cast of the long-running hit CBS series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation during the ninth episode of the season, according to the Associated Press. He will take over as the series lead from departing star William L. Petersen, who will be performing in Chicago productions of Dublin Carol and Blackbird this season.

Fishburne’s character will be a college lecturer and former pathologist with a personal secret, according to the report. The series will return to the air on October 9.

The actor just closed in the Broadway solo show Thurgood, in which he played the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, for which he earned a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk Award, among other honors. He won the Tony, Drama Desk , Outer Critics Circle, and Theater World awards for his role in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running and also appeared on Broadway in the Roundabout’s revival of The Lion in Winter.

His additional stage credits include L.A. productions of Fences (for which he won an L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award) and Without Walls (for which he received an NAACP Theater Award). Fishburne received an Academy Award nomination for What’s Love Got to Do With It and the Emmy Award for Tribeca and Miss Evers’ Boys.