“I was shocked” – When ‘Max’ Paula Newsome made her feelings known about CSI: Vegas’ cancellation

CSI: Vegas marked the revival of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation six years after the original show’s conclusion. The crime drama premiered on CBS in 2021 and brought back some veteran characters while also introducing new investigators.

Paula Newsome starred as the new lead, Maxine "Max" Roby, the leader of the crime lab. The show got quite popular among the audience and achieved good ratings. However, it was surprisingly canceled ahead of the Season 3 finale in April 2024.

The announcement left fans shocked and disappointed. At the time, Paula Newsome revealed that she was equally surprised by CSI: Vegas’ cancellation, as the show was performing well. In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the actress revealed that changes at CBS and Paramount could have been the reason behind the decision:

“Yes, I was shocked. The numbers were great. People who had numbers worse than ours on other networks got a full season pickup. Things are shifting at Paramount and CBS, and they’ve got to do what they think they have to do.”

Paula Newsome once talked about CSI: Vegas’ cancellation

During the interview, Paula Newsome also talked about what she learned on the sets of CSI: Vegas while playing Max for three years. She revealed the series made her a kinder person:

“I learned the value of being kind to people. Being No. 1 on the call sheet of this show, I learned how much when you’re just nice to people, how that travels. That’s for everybody. That’s the crew, too, knowing the crew’s name. That became very important to me.”

She also opened up about how she had a difficult time memorizing her dialogue in the first season due to a head injury, adding that CSI: Vegas also made her understand that it was important to take care of herself:

“And, also, to take care of my brain. Truly. Because I fell and I hit my head four years ago. In the first season, it was really hard for me to memorize lines, so I went to this place and he asked me if I had fallen and hit my head. I was like, ‘I did.’”

“He was like, ‘Yeah, I can see it. That’s why you’re having trouble with your lines.’ So, I started doing piano. It was amazing. Memorizing my lines became a snap.”

Finally, Newsome talked about the experience of working with CSI veterans like William Petersen, who played Gil Grissom, Jorja Fox, who played Sara Sidle, and Marg Helgenberger, who reprised his role as Catherine Willows:

“It’s a little like a dream. When you go through it and your scene partner is Petersen or Jorja Fox or Marg Helgenberger, you have to just blink yourself back into your body. The thing that makes it easy is just getting back to the work. The work is the same. It’s just the people that you’re looking at happen to be icons of the CSI legacy.”

Newsome has not appeared in any television project since the conclusion of CSI: Vegas. Apart from the actress, the show also starred Matt Lauria as Joshua "Josh" Folsom, Mandeep Dhillon as Ahalya "Allie" Rajan, Mel Rodriguez as Dr. Hugo Ramirez, Ariana Guerra as Serena Chavez, Jay Lee as Christopher "Chris" Park, and Lex Medlin as Beau Finado.

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CSI: Vegas is available to stream on Paramount+.

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