‘CSI’: Peri Gilpin to Play Ted Danson’s Wife in Multiepisode Arc

The Season 12 finale of CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is shaping up to be jam-packed with guest stars.

The veteran procedural has tapped former Frasier star Peri Gilpin for a multiepisode arc to play the wife of Ted Danson‘s D.B. Russell, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Gilpin, who recently guest starred as a difficult patient on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, will play Allison, a woman who grew up as part of a well-established Golden State family who rebelled against her banker father and married the iconoclastic criminalist Russell.

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She’s described as the keeper of the hearth at home with an easy way about her that belies an iron will and rivals her husband’s intelligence who not only rules his heart but his life as well.

Gilpin will make her first appearance in the season finale, scheduled for Wednesday, May 9 at 10 p.m., and continue the role into the 13th season of the CBS drama.

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In addition, Jaclyn Smith will return for the season finale and reprise her role as Hodges’ (Wallace Langham) long-mentioned but rarely seen pushy mother Olivia. Smith guest starred in the 18th episode this season when the duo were kidnapped as they shopped for a ring for Hodges’ faux engagement to Morgan (Elisabeth Harnois).

Gilpin and Smith join Conor O’Farrell, who will reprise his role as Undersheriff Jeffrey McKeen in the “Homecoming” episode. In the hour, O’Farrell will resurface when a friend of the sheriff (Prison Break’s Barbara Eve Harris) becomes a prime suspect in his wife’s brutal murder and the investigation’s political fallout reveals the truth behind Russell’s (Ted Danson) troubled history with Finlay (Elisabeth Shue).

Gilpin is repped by Innovative Artists, Burstein Co. and Bloom Hergott. Smith is with ICM and Jay D. Schwartz & Associates.

E-mail: Lesley.Goldberg@thr.com; Twitter: @Snoodit