The CSI Character Everyone Forgets Jordin Sparks Played

Jordin Sparks may be best known for her singing career, but she's managed to carve out a solid place for herself in the acting arena as well. Sparks held the lead in the 2012 remake of "Sparkle" — which featured Whitney Houston's final performance — and showed up in "Ride Along 2" and "Left Behind." She also pops up in the venerable procedural drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," joining Justin Bieber on the show's musically gifted guest roster.

Sparks shows up during Episode 9 of Season 14, "Check In and Check Out." She plays Alison Stone, who instantaneously becomes the gang's main suspect when she stumbles out of a motel room wild-eyed, crying, and covered in blood. Multiple other victims have been murdered over the span of a few weeks in the same motel room. When she turns out to be a math teacher, and the victim ends up being one of her students, the team thinks she might be guilty of all the murders. But after an interrogation where Alison reveals that she has no memory of the crime and thinks she was possessed, they focus in on the room. What they find there leads to a dark revelation involving the motel's manager. 

As with all "CSI" cases, it's quite the sordid, grisly case — and apparently one that Sparks had a whole lot of fun playing out.

Jordin Sparks told Entertainment Tonight in 2013 that being on "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" was a bucket list moment for her. "I'm such a huge fan of 'CSI'; I loved Miami, I loved New York, I love Las Vegas. Before 'Idol,' I owned all the box sets and would watch as soon as my homework was done. Or in the car. Or on the computer. I love it so much. So to do this is a dream come true. My 14-year-old self is dying inside," she said at the time.

The actress' casting on the program was apparently a matter of fate; she'd come into a production office to read for another part in another project, but she saw folders related to the show sitting on the casting director's desk. Excited, she gushed about her love of all things "CSI" to the casting department and ended up scoring an audition for the series. 

Actually being on the set provided another thrill for Sparks, who admitted that the process of being soaked in the show's ubiquitous fake blood was quite a lot of fun for her as well. "It was so gnarly to be covered in that stuff. I kept asking them to put more and more blood on me," she laughed. It's an interesting way to enter the annals of television history — and for Sparks to become a permanent part of one of her favorite franchises.