Every night, Marg Helgenberger dons a stunning, early 20th century Southern gown and enacts a moment as shocking as it is criminal. Even if you’re familiar with The Little Foxes, Lillian Hellman’s heart-stopping drama about selfishness, greed and deceit, and even if you know what’s about to transpire, nothing can prepare you for the ice-cold vigor with which Helgenberger plays Regina Gibbons, a woman who uses circumstance to her advantage in the most brutal means possible.

Hellman’s 1939 masterpiece has seen its share of legends take on the role of Regina. Tallulah Bankhead opened it on Broadway, Bette Davis immortalized it in William Wyler’s classic film, Anne Bancroft and Elizabeth Taylor starred in revivals, the latter of which played for six weeks at the Kennedy Center in the early eighties. Stepping into Regina’s shoes is a formidable task for nearly any actress, but you need starpower to truly carry the part. And Helgenberger has starpower to spare. Witness her indelible portrayal of Catherine Willows in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, in which she served as an emotional balance to William Petersen’s cool, distant Gil Grissom. Helgenberger brings presence to almost any part she plays, and when she’s onstage, inches away, it’s impossible to tear your gaze from her. (That said, she’s well-matched in The Little Foxes by a Washington powerhouse cast that includes Ed Gero, Isabel Keating and Jack Willis, as Regina’s beleaguered, ailing husband, Horace.)

“I had never read the play before it was offered to me, nor had I seen the movie,” says the actress, radiant at 57. “I was reluctant to see the movie, just because, you don’t want to be influenced or anything. Having said that, I did see it. It’s not easy to get a hold of, so I got it on Amazon. To be honest, I started watching it sort of too late at night and I was tired, so I kind of fell asleep.” (She has since watched the film and has nothing but praise for Davis.)

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Helgenberger, of course, is nothing like Regina. But in her presence, one feels an intense gust of strength, assuredness, intellect, traits that carry over to her portrayal. She infuses the southern viper with just enough humanity to make her poison that much more lethal. Helgenberger may not be an evil woman herself, but she sure as hell knows how to bring one to vivid life.

METRO WEEKLY: You have to become Regina every night. She is not a pleasant human being. What is it like to inhabit such an evil character?

MARG HELGENBERGER: The first act is fun, because it’s setting up the plot, and I get to flirt. It’s just easy breezy, you know? Then it just progressively gets more challenging, and Regina gets progressively more manipulative, and then just gets downright cruel. When I first started working on it, I was kind of scared of the cruelty, because I just can’t imagine doing that to someone. I was like, “Who does that?” Unless you’re just so ambitious, so cut off, so desperate. She’s got this anger that’s been built up for years and years and years, because of not getting any kind of inheritance.

MW: When you take on a starring role, as an actor you generally want to have the audience sympathize with you. You want to have them like you. But there’s really no way to like Regina. What she does is brutal.

HELGENBERGER: When we were still in rehearsals, I was freaked out. I said, “Everybody’s going to hate me!” and Kyle Donnelly, the director, goes, “You can’t expect them to like you.” It’s not that I really expected that, but it goes against everything about me, because I can’t imagine doing anything like that to anybody, and just as an actor, you do kind of want to be liked.

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A friend of mine came to the show the other night, and she brought a friend of hers who I didn’t know. Afterwards, first thing out of her mouth upon meeting me, she goes, “You were so mean! You were just so mean!” She couldn’t believe how horrible I was. I was thrown back, I said, “Yeah, she’s a pretty cruel person.” She was kind of freaked out by it. But it’s unforgivable what she does.

On the other hand, villains are kind of fun to play. They’re juicy parts, and people love to hate them. She’s also just got so many other great qualities. She’s really funny, I think. She’s just got amazingly sharp wit — nothing gets by her. I don’t think she’s as bad as her brothers, who have spent decades cheating people, and treating people poorly, and being dishonest. I don’t really think she’s dishonest. I think she actually is pretty honest.
MW: When we become used to seeing someone in a specific role on television for so long, it’s hard to mentally break away from the character. It must also be hard to break away from it as an actor.

HELGENBERGER: That’s the one downfall of being on a television show that was as monster of a hit as CSI — you can get typecast, and people sort of see you in that role. I don’t even blame the public. It’s Hollywood. Hollywood just wants to pigeonhole you. I still get lots of offers of playing that kind of a character. It was a great part, I had a good time doing it, and she had a lot of sass and swagger and intelligence and all that, but I’d rather do something completely different. How about a comedy, you know? Who doesn’t like getting laughs?
MW: CSI was pretty amazing. It’s the only procedural I’d watch. Though I’ll be honest, I drifted away after Petersen left.

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HELGENBERGER: I think the show lost quite a few viewers after Billy left the show. There was no character on TV like that at the time and Billy is a very interesting actor. He brought the right amount of masculinity, quirkiness, intelligence, and sexiness to that particular character. But also, he left after — god, season 8, I think? Something like that. It was a long time he was with the show. I was with it for close to 12 years. When we first premiered, it was the only game in town. It was a show that was based on forensic science, and illuminating what criminalists do, and with all the CSI shots, and the flashbacks, it was just fresh and unique.

MW: It spawned a lot of copycats.

HELGENBERGER: Dozens.

MW: The crime scenes were often so graphic and realistic. Did you ever get grossed out on set?

HELGENBERGER: Yeah. It was our 100th episode, and it was about a gender reassignment surgery gone wrong — a male-to-female corpse that was inside a storage unit. They were transitioning, and it was a botched job. Our prosthetic makeup people had made up this bloody mess. We actually shot in a real storage unit, of course, in the middle of the night. It was so graphic that nobody could be in that room for longer than they could stand it. It was so horrific. They had to shoot it in a very specific way, too, because there’s just no way it would have been aired on CBS otherwise. I can recall it right now in my mind, just how nasty it was. They did do a lot of things like that, they kind of pushed the envelope.

MW: What is your take on the politics of the LGBT movement, particularly with regard to same-sex marriage?

HELGENBERGER: [Laughs.] I’m in the theater community, and anybody who wouldn’t be for gay marriage, I think, would be thrown out, you know what I mean?

Every woman I know has a gay husband, or someone they consider their gay husband, who is somebody they can talk to, and just really unload on, and they’ll hear them out.

MW: Do you have a gay husband?

HELGENBERGER: Yes, I do. I have two, actually. I have an East Coast and a West Coast. I have a boyfriend, but he doesn’t particularly like to do the kind of travel I like to do. So the gay husband comes along, and he’s my companion, and it’s great. Now they have partners. One got married, and so I feel like my traveling companions are abandoning me.

MW: Do you worry about the politics of this country, where it’s headed right now?

HELGENBERGER: This is insanity, what’s happening. Truly, every day, I’m just shocked. I’ve been a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s from back when she was the First Lady. I actually came with a delegation of women from Hollywood for a rally that they had here called Stand Up For Children, which was spearheaded by her boss, mentor, Marian Wright Edelman, and it was specifically to raise awareness about the health bill that she was able to pass for eight million children. It’s just beyond my comprehension how anybody could support a racist misogynist moron like Donald Trump. It’s beyond my comprehension. I mean, he’s a bad guy, you know? He’s a really bad guy.

Look, obviously there is a faction of the country out there that feel as if they have been left out, left behind, and he speaks to them. I don’t know exactly how he’s really going to help them that much, but he speaks to them. They’ll forgive him for anything. It doesn’t bother them that he went bankrupt several times, that he’s not paid taxes, that he’s done a number of things. Cheated people, not paid them. They’ll forgive him anything. It’s mystifying.

MW: Well, in the debate, when she said, “You haven’t paid your taxes,” he went, “That makes me smart,” and then denied having said that, despite the tangible proof.

HELGENBERGER: That’s what I mean. There’s something wrong with him. There’s something wrong with him. I don’t know what a shrink would diagnose what he is, but he’s not a normal person. There’s something mentally wrong with him. He’s able to function — he’s obviously been a successful businessman, but some of it has been by being dishonest and taking advantage of the laws that he’s taken advantage of, which is rigged. He keeps saying, “Oh, everything’s rigged.” Yeah, the system’s rigged for corporations. They allow you all these deductions, and allow you to get away with not paying your fair share. He’s vile. He’s just vile.

MW: Do you worry about what would happen to this country should he win?

HELGENBERGER: Oh, my God. I honestly think it would be a really dark day in American history if he were to be elected. A really dark day. In all honesty, I really don’t think that there’s enough people to vote for him.

People say, “It won’t be any better with her,” with “her” being Hillary Clinton. They think it’ll be the same, and I’m going, “Really? You really think somebody who wants to build a wall to keep Mexicans out, who wants to have a ban on Muslims entering this country” — the list goes on and on — “is better or the same as Hillary Clinton? Really?” What are his policies? Does he even have any? Don’t get me started.

The Little Foxes runs through Oct. 30 in Arena’s Kreeger Theater, 1101 6th St. SW. Tickets are $50 to $100. Call 202-488-3300 or visit arenastage.org.