Defying here & eternity

MANILA, Philippines - Reason over emotion is every detective’s mantra. This is to clear any shadow of doubt in unearthing the truth. CSI: NY’s Mac Taylor played by Gary Sinise knows this like the back of his hand. It’s all-work-and-no-play for the CSI: NY main man. That’s why crime investigation followers can’t help but wish their Sherlock Holmes-like hero a damsel in distress to rescue and to fall in love with.

Beyond Mac’s stoic image lies a loving and loyal husband to Claire as implied in Season One. In the story, Claire was one of those thousands who died in that fateful day of Sept. 11, 2001 when the Twin Towers were attacked by suicide terrorists. Breathing life into the character is Jaime Ray Newman when CSI: NY returns to AXN on May 16 at 10 p.m. In the Season Eight opening, Claire won’t be just a figment of Mac’s imagination or an image left on the viewer’s mind.

“Well, I worked in a financial world,” offers Jaime when asked to share details about her character during a recent phoner with The STAR and two other publications from Malaysia and Singapore. “That’s kinda pretty much the only thing that I knew. I was a lawyer or something obviously that my work (centered) around the Twin Towers. You know Gary and I didn’t talk much about it. The main thing was just we (our characters) gave each other a lot of joy. He gave me a lot of joy in my life. And I gave him a lot of joy. I think Claire was the one person who could just bring a big fat smile on his face. I don’t think he smiles that often.”

Since she is also a wife in real life, Jaime has never had any difficulty portraying Claire — and knowing where she is coming from.

“(I looked at it) like any other acting job,” she shares. “You get on set. And the day you get on set, you have to pretend as total stranger as your brother, your mother, your father, your lover or someone you met five minutes earlier. So, really it was no difference than any other acting job, except I had the rare honor to work with Gary Sinise. The second I met him it was like we were long-lost best friends. We just connected and bonded from the first minute we started talking.”

Is Mac ready to let go of Claire’s memories — and to find a new woman in his life?

Jaime with Gary Sinise in a scene from AXN’s CSI: NY Season Eight.

“I don’t think he is ever gonna let go of them,” Jaime answers. “I think he can make a room in his heart for this new woman. A lot of Claire coming back to visit him is about that. It’s about him getting the permission (of Claire) to find this other woman. After eight years, he has finally found another love. And he has a lot of guilt about it. I come back and say, ‘Babe, it’s okay. I love you. And I know you’ve been with her and that doesn’t mean you don’t love me anymore. But you are alive. I’m not. But you are alive.’”

When the 9/11 attacks happened, Jaime was living with her parents in Los Angeles and just graduated from college.

“I’ll never forget that (moment),” she recalls. “I was sleeping in their downstairs bedroom. It was six o’ clock in the morning. And my parents (roused me), ‘Wake up, wake up. The Twin Towers has been hit.’ And I thought, ‘What?’ I ran upstairs just the second tower was being hit and we saw that live on television. I had friends that just graduated from college (at that time) working in the financial world and I didn’t know anyone (who) died. It was a defining moment. You could feel like the world stood still when that happened.”

Life has never been the same again since then. But life goes on. Jaime landed her first acting job in General Hospital. And that made her feel “the luckiest girl in the world and (I felt like) I won in the lottery.” According to Jaime, doing soap operas or TV series is “a very interesting genre because it forces you to learn how to memorize dialogues very quickly and also how to be emotionally (accessible). It was like (taking up) my master’s.”

Eleven years after, Jaime is playing a 9/11 victim on the small screen. This is perhaps her tribute to those who perished that day and reminder of the ugly face of terrorism.

“God, forbid. If something like that happens, I want my husband to find love again,” says Jaime. “I don’t think you ever stop loving someone. You just don’t want to live your whole life in mourning. You (want to) celebrate that person and find even more love in your life.”

Although he is slow in women, Mac deserves a second chance at love. Part of that is “allowing him to release and so he can be with this other woman,” adds Jaime.

How is Claire coming back from the afterlife? Jaime says her character is not appearing through a flashback but she “comes back in an image, not as a ghost necessarily.”

Let’s just wait and see how love will defy here and eternity.