Shanks is required to be on set this Friday, forcing him to bow out of this weekend’s Wolf SG-10 convention in London.
It’s not known just how large his role on the hit series will be, but it is most likely the “potential major TV role” that forced him to cancel his appearance at last week’s London Expo (due to a meeting in L.A.). Fans may breathe a little easier that the actor hasn’t taken a full-time job that will preclude him from returning for the tenth season of Stargate SG-1, expected to begin production in Vancouver in March.
UPDATE: Shanks’s publicist has passed along more details about the guest role (via Michael Shanks Online):
- Script is always subject to change, but here is the role description. The turnaround is usually about a month or so on the air date, we won’t know for sure until the episode is shot and edited.
Michael plays a landscape architect and boyfriend of a woman who was raped. The rape suspect is then in turn murdered, and Michael becomes one of a host of suspects in the man’s death.
Shanks’s character is named Doug Shets, according to a GateWorld source, and appears in the season’s eleventh episode. When a convicted rapist is exhonorated and set free six years into his term, he files a lawsuit against the CSI division and his accuser, Valerie Naff. The hunt is on for the real rapist, using the newer technology now available. A new suspect is identified — but soon turns up dead. Stets, Valerie’s boyfriend, becomes a key suspect in the murder.
Though not the biggest guest role in the episode, it is a character important to the story. He appears in at least two major scenes, according to information available.
CSI: Miami airs Mondays at 10 p.m. Eastern/Pacific on CBS. We’ll keep our ears to the ground to find out when Shanks’s episode will air!
(Thanks to SDJ for first reporting this!)