Days' Diva Gender-Bends on CSI

Hey, CSI fans! You die-hards may remember Sarah Buxton from the "Eleven Angry Jurors" episode that aired last January. She played Lana, a Las Vegas stripper who served her jury duty with a heapin' helping of sass on the side. In fact, Ms. Buxton's r&#233sum&#233 reads like a laundry list of shady-lady roles — go-go girls, hookers, home-wreckers and other miscellaneous temptresses — in films, prime-time TV and daytime soaps like Sunset Beach and Days of our Lives. Tonight she returns to CSI (10 pm/ET on CBS) in a part that's very risqué, even for her.

"I'm a transsexual murder victim," Buxton tells TV Guide Online with a naughty grin. "A CSI director saw me in an L.A. play produced by [series regular] Jorja Fox and called with lots of compliments. He asked Jorja if I'd be offended if I were asked to play this part. She told him no, since it's an awesome role. And he wanted a real woman, since it's important to the plot that the victim be believable as a girl from the beginning. So I guess I'm supposed to be a successful surgery case!"

An actress possessed of a more fragile ego might've been irked. Not Buxton. "My voice is low and I have strong features," she says. "It's funny, because this summer I got very close to getting a different role as a transsexual in a movie. I guess I'm different looking. I never wanted to play boring girlfriend roles anyway."

Indeed, Buxton never bores us. This year, the expert vamp added some much needed comic relief to Days' ill-conceived serial-killer story line. "I was supposed to be there for four days and it ended up being three months," says Buxton, who played a blackmailing prostitute called Crystal Chablis. "I couldn't believe a lot of the dirty things I said on daytime TV, which I personally would never say. I'd talk about making money on my back. Or I'd say, 'Mmm... Tasty daddy,' about Drake Hogestyn's character, John. I'd go on and on about how I wanted to take his tasty buns in the back of a limo. We laughed for weeks."

By the way, Crystal's currently MIA on Days. Was she written out when fans weren't looking? "They never told me goodbye," Buxton says. "The last thing I did was say, 'I think I gotta get out of town. I'll talk to you later.' Drake had beaten me up, tied me up, and thrown water on me. He was really mean to me! But this week's CSI really takes the cake when it comes to me not being done right by a man, let me tell you."