Nine-year-old Joseph Marsh's big dreams of acting are becoming reality when he appears on the popular police drama Criminal Minds on Wednesday.
The third-grader at White Bluffs Elementary School in Richland will play Billy Young, an 8-year-old boy on the CBS show, which airs at 9 p.m.
"He's near the end of the show," said Joseph's mother, Lisa. "He plays a boy who has an older sister whom a serial killer is targeting."
The Richland boy's real 13-year-old sister Katie also is an actress and the reason he's pursuing acting gigs.
Katie was up for a small part in the 2010 movie Extraordinary Measures, starring Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser. When Lisa asked Joseph if he was interested in acting in it, he jumped at the chance.
"So I submitted him online and two weeks later he was offered the part to be a sick kid in a hospital bed," his mother said. "After that, he said, 'I was only here for two days -- I wanted to be in the whole movie!' "
"It was good," Joseph said of the experience. "I like to meet famous people."
Last year, Lisa took him to L.A. for acting lessons and he spent most of the summer with private coach Vicki Baumann. After performing a scene for Scott David, a casting director for Criminal Minds, Joseph was called to audition for the show.
"I think they thought we lived in L.A.," his mother said. "So we booked a flight the next day. The audition was in a couple days."
Allowing her son to play a young boy being pursued by a serial killer was unsettling to his mother, but after meeting the other children on set, Lisa said she realized these kids want to be there.
"I thought, 'God, what am I doing?' " she said. "But none of them were nervous at all. Joseph stepped right up to the plate."
Joseph and his mom spent four days in L.A. for the show. In January, they plan to return to California for pilot season, when shows in development are given the go-ahead, to try to expand Joseph's small screen repertoire.
In the meantime, Katie is working with Baumann to audition for the Coen Brothers' film True Grit. Katie and Joseph can be seen in Extraordinary Measures, which comes out Jan. 22.
-- Bethany Woo: 582-1465; blee@tricityherald.com
Similar stories:
Tri-City theater group pays tribute to do-it-all Brodzinski
Tri-City theater group pays tribute to do-it-all Brodzinski
PASCO — Jo Brodzinski could be described as tireless.
Her friends and fans easily go beyond that, recounting stories of this ageless arts advocate, director, performer, producer, stage manager, drama coach, mother, grandmother, winemaker and mentor to hundreds of youthful Tri-City actors hankering for a chance to be on stage.
Try adding vibrant, multitalented, fiercely protective, inspiring, and a warm fuzzy to that description and it might be even more precise, said Ginny Quinley, a fellow director and Brodzinski's longtime friend.
Prosecutors looking at report in child's death
Prosecutors looking at report in child's death
The investigation into the death of a 1-year-old Richland boy has been completed and the police report is being reviewed by Benton County prosecutors.
Richland police Capt. Mike Cobb said investigators have received most of the information they were waiting on from medical experts about Ryder Morrison's death.
A couple of supplemental items still are outstanding, but everything else has been forwarded to prosecutors, who will determine if any of the facts support a criminal charge, Cobb said.
Manslaughter charges filed against nanny in death of Richland boy
Manslaughter charges filed against nanny in death of Richland boy
Within an hour of a Richland boy's fatal injury, the 1-year-old had been climbing on his mother during her lunch break and playing with a plastic hammer, court documents show.
Ryder Morrison's mother, Tawney Johnson, had gone home for lunch and was back at work by noon June 22.
At 12:14 p.m., her nanny called 911 to say the boy had fallen, documents said.
Boy's death ruled a homicide
Boy's death ruled a homicide
The death of a 1-year-old Richland boy in June has been ruled a homicide, Benton County Coroner John Hansens said Friday.
Ryder Joseph Morrison died in surgery after suffering a head injury at his home June 22.
Hansens issued the final death certificate Friday and listed Ryder's cause of death as abusive head trauma.
'Mommy's in the trunk': Evidence or nothing?
'Mommy's in the trunk': Evidence or nothing?
The summer after Susan Powell disappeared, her father said, her young son Braden drew a picture at day care of a van with three people in it and told caregivers it showed his family going camping: "Mommy's in the trunk," the boy said.
Print
Email Story
