Michael Weatherly will soon reprise the role of Anthony DiNozzo, much to the delight of “NCIS” fans. But the adventure almost ended sooner than expected, as the actor recounted in an interview.
NCIS would have been very different without Michael Weatherly, but there was a moment when someone else might well have taken over the role from the charming Tony DiNozzo.
Ahead of the NCIS: Tony & Ziva spinoff arriving later this year, the stars Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo have launched their own podcast, called “Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch”. In this 25-episode series, they discuss their time on the show, sharing anecdotes on and off camera, with future distinguished guests such as Sean Murray and Sasha Alexander.
But it all starts with how they got their cult roles and for Michael Weatherlyif everything seemed simple at first, things quickly became complicated to the point of calling his career into question.
“I was working with Peter Bogdanovich in Australia and we’re going to talk about this again with some of our guests in the future. But I had a magical dinner with Donald P. Bellisario and his family and after dinner, Don offered me the role”, the actor began to tell.
“So I took the role, got on a plane, started right away, I think I had a weekend to turn around and start shooting the two episodes of JAG that made up the pilot”, recalled Michael Weatherly before admitting: “And I had no idea who the character was, I had no idea what I was doing.”
So, he was quickly put in his place by the creator of the series…
A real shock
Faced with his unsatisfactory performance, the actor was therefore reprimanded and almost lost his place in the series.
“Don Bellisario quickly grabbed me by the skin, like a puppy, by the back of my neck, not literally, well, almost literally, and shook me”, continued the actor. “He said, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing, but whatever you’re doing, stop it because it’s not good’ and that was my acting. He said, ‘I want the guy I had dinner with. I want you. I don’t care what you do script wise, fuck the script, I wrote it. If you don’t do it, we’ll replace you with someone who can. I want to see this guy. I don’t care about the rest.”
CBS Michael Weatherly in the first episode of “NCIS” (2003)
Shocked, the actor, who had already proven himself notably in the series Dark Angel with Jessica Alba, then questioned his career: “It shook me to my core, because here I was, 13 years into what I thought would be a professional career, and this guy told me I couldn’t do it. You spend all this time with writers and beautiful people who do beautiful work, but they correct you, correct you, correct you, correct you. So you start to get really self-conscious and closed off and more and more stiff and unsure and uncertain about your own flavor and, further, about your own mind.”
The rest, however, you know it, the actor must have ended up convincing the creator of the show since it was he who played the role of Anthony DiNozzo for 13 seasons, a role he landed in 2003 and that he is preparing to resume this year in the spin-off NCIS: Tony & Ziva which should see the light of day in the coming months.
In the meantime, you can find NCIS: Special Investigations on M6, W9 or even 6Ter. The first 18 seasons of the parent series can also be watched in streaming on Prime Video.
