KEY POINTS:
Sitting in the hotel lobby, a blonde woman teeters past in strappy stilettos and stovepipe white jeans.
A gold chain belt adorns her waist, long blond hair cascading over a leopard print cardigan.
A minute later, a woman approaches and says: "Kathryn's ready for you now."
Kathryn is
actress Kathryn Morris, star of Cold Case, who plays the serious but sympathetic Detective Lilly Rush - a woman best known for her dowdy trouser suits and sensible shoes.
Imagine my surprise, as I enter the room and discover the blond, leopard print-loving woman is, in fact, Morris.
She gets that all the time, she laughs.
People constantly struggle to place the gilded blonde as the quietly compassionate Rush.
"You know what I get a lot lately, which is really funny. 'You look so much like this girl on Cold Case ...' It's insane. They go, 'You look just like her but you're not like her at all'."
Sometimes Morris plays along, depending on how she feels.
Recently, a Canadian customs official told her she looked like "that spooky lady who solves all those old cases".
Apparently he used to think she was cute but now he just finds her spooky.
As he stamped Morris' passport and waved her through she didn't dare tell him that she was in fact the spooky lady.
Morris finds such instances amusing and doesn't take offence.
"I'm not like the character at all," she explains. "I don't take it too seriously."
She does, however, take the character seriously. Sometimes too much.
"She's very heavy. She's got a lot of angst. Sometimes I think, `wow, I really need to take a jog,' or something to get me out of the funk after work.
"Your body doesn't really know it's not real. I'm experiencing it as real as I would, while still knowing it's not reality."
Playing a character so unlike herself, Morris had little experience to draw on, so created her own secret flashbacks for the detective.
Much like the flashback screened at the beginning of each episode, Morris says she imagines her own personal flashbacks for Rush; defining moments that shape how she plays the role.
She won't reveal what they are, but says if you look closely, you can see them, like "blips on a radar".
Originally drawn to the Rush's "empathetic devotion", Morris says after five years, she feels the character and show have become a little dark. She would like to see a shift in the opposite direction, and lighten up a little.
"She's gotten really heavy in the last few years, which has not been my favourite thing.
"I think we need to have a pendulum swing the other way, just to break it up a little.
"Not so that's she's full of joy and ecstatic and a people person but I think it would be a good thing [to lighten up]."
Likewise, Morris feels that some of the stories go too far, making both her and the crew uncomfortable.
Particularly those based on real-life cases.
"There was one episode we did this year about children that had been put into freezers. Some of the crew didn't want to be involved, they didn't want to go close to where the freezers were," she says.
"It was a bit too horrible ... It had an icky feeling."
She would also like to see writers steer away from certain eras and themes, and explore some new, fresh territory.
"We seem to have some themes that we've gone back to. I think we need to move forward.
"I would love to see some cases that represent some different times in the 70s, a different time in the 60s. What element of the 80s have we not explored and how does that inform the way I would solve a case? What was I doing in that period of time?"
In particular, she is fascinated by the unseemly glamour of the 70s, what she calls the "fabulous but horrible drug scene". And breakdancing. She would love to make an episode about breakdancing.
With two years left on her contract, Morris still loves her character and feels there are plenty more stories left in the show.
Audiences, it would seem, still love the show as well. After four years on air in New Zealand, Cold Case has become the highest-rating crime drama on television, ahead of the popular CSI franchise and Dick Wolf's multiple series.
But what is it that sets Cold Case ahead of those other shows? What is the added appeal?
The time travel and flashbacks add an extra dimension, says Morris, but mostly she thinks it is the sense of justice the show offers.
"Everybody has seen a wrong that has been done to another and wants to see things made right."
One of the slogans used to promote the show when it first came out was, "hope lives because evidence never dies".
Marketers no longer use the catchphrase but Morris does, as it captures what she believes is the essence of the show.
"It really is about hope, about getting payback. Time will reveal the truth and there will be closure," she says.
"Bottom line: closure. The show is really about emotional closure and I think everyone can relate to that."
LOWDOWN
Who: Kathryn Morris
Born: Cincinnati, Ohio, January 28, 1969
What: Plays detective Lilly Rush on Cold Case, Wednesday, 8.30pm, TV One
Claim to fame: Was the first person to beat up Xena, when she played religious zealot Najara on the New Zealand-made series. Also starred in the Vanilla Ice movie Cool As Ice.
