You only get a hint of Emily Procter’s North Carolina accent when she plays Calleigh Duquesne on the hit show CSI: Miami (listen it for tonight on CBS), but her Southern charm becomes much more pronounced when you get her talking about disembodied limbs, her alma mater and her fledgling interior decorating business off the set of her hit TV show. Our Brian Truitt found that out recently when he talked with the spunky 41-year-old actress for an item on my Who’s News page this past weekend. Read below for more of their conversation.


You’ve been on CSI: Miami since it began in 2002. How have you tried to develop Calleigh over that time?

I’ve been trying to make choices based on her non-written-about issues. That’s been something I’ve anchored myself to in terms of her character. I was shooting a scene yesterday, and in this episode there’s a women that we believe was a drunk driver and she killed somebody and Calleigh’s father is an alcoholic. It was really nice because the director said, “I want to give you a moment with this body because after all, your father is an alcoholic.” And I thought, “This is great! They’re going for it!”

How about the gory crime scenes? Have you gotten used to those over eight seasons?

In the very beginning, it was awful. I couldn’t sleep, and I had terrible nightmares. It’s funny you bring it up because I was just talking to our technical adviser about this yesterday. His wife had just had a baby and he watched the epidural needle go in her back and it undid him, but yet he’s been able to compartmentalize all of these gruesome murders over the last 10 years. Every now and then, something really weird will gross me out, and I think, “Really?” That must still be in there. I’ve just shoved it under a pile of other stuff.

What’s the most recent thing that grossed you out?

This foot! We were working on this dismembered body, and it’s not like the dismembered body bothered me. It’s that when Christian [Clemenson] was scraping the toe, it moved and I was like, “Ewwwww.” Once you get used to this, I guess, you can get used to anything.

You grew up in Raleigh, N.C., and seem to have kept your Southern accent.

Probably not as much on the show. Calleigh’s a bit too stern to have such an accent. It would end up with me going, “Did you do it?! Come on. Just tell me!”

Aside from Sandra Bullock, you’re probably one of the few celebrities to ever come out of East Carolina University.

I went back this summer and I was like, “They have got to get it together.” Some of these dorms are exactly the same, and I had no idea how ghetto it was. I was like, “Mental note: Call school. Offer money for dorms.” [Laughs] That’s what so great about ECU. Any other school would have been on my doorstep. ECU’s like, “We’re so proud.” I’m like, “Do you want some money?” And they’re like, “Ah, if you feel like it. Don’t worry about it.” I was like, “You guys are cool.”

I hear you also do some interior decorating.

I do a lot. Usually, I’m doing a house. This is the first year I have not done a house, but I’ve done one every other season of the show. This year, it’s possible it might be our last season or my last season, so I thought I’m not gonna do anything else but just enjoy being on the show this year. But I love it. It’s a big area of interest of mine. If and when the show stops, that’s my first order of business: to get my contractor’s license.

Do your friends hire you or do you make yourself available to anybody?

[Laughs] I usually end up working for my friends, just because I think it’s a little weird for other people to be like, “You’re that girl on the TV show. That’s freaking me out.”

You need to have your co-star David Caruso hire you.

David actually just asked me about doing his place. [Laughs] It’s big. That was part of the thing — he was like, How long would it take?” And I was like, “It would take me a year.” That would be hard.

Would you ever consider hosting one of these interior-decorating reality shows they have now?

I’ve actually been talking to somebody about doing a science show, which I’m really excited about. It would be scientific mysteries along the lines of Scientific American and things like that. He said, “It’d be great if you did a show because we never have any girls do things like that.” And I thought, “Yes! I would love to do that!”

Did you grow up liking science?

I just grew up liking puzzles. Even to this day, I love to do jigsaw puzzles, and then it gets really bad because I’ll time myself doing them. I’m like, “How quickly can I solve this mystery?” I just like that. In a lot of ways, ultimately I feel like I ended up on the best show for me because that’s all I do.

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