Five minutes with... Michael Weatherly, star of NCIS
You're in Sydney for the TV Week Logie Awards and a slew of press
commitments for NCIS. How's it going?
I'm having an amazing time. The flight alone [from LA] is so much fun. I'm a
fan of the plane wine. [Laughs.] So it's been an absolutely wonderful time.
Hamish and Andy - I love them. I had so much fun meeting them backstage [at
the Logies] and then doing their radio show the next morning. I was
exhausted, but they carried me through. And I have to say a slew of other
people that night were so much fun. Fifi Box has more energy than a
hurricane. It's been extraordinary. And yesterday I had a great big walk
through Sydney with my niece [Alexandra Breckenridge].
She lives here?
No, my niece came with me. She's my sister's kid - but she's not a kid,
she's 24. She's an actress on a show called Dirt in the States so, in her
own right, she's a force to be reckoned with. But we see the world the same
way. She's very cool.
So you're having a break from work for a few months?
Yes, on hiatus for two months. It's going to be nice to take a little break.
What will you do once you leave Australia?
I'm going to see The Police in Vancouver, they're starting their world tour
there and I'm so psyched. And Vancouver is a city I lived in for a few years
doing [TV series] Dark Angel and I haven't been back. So I'm going to stay
in the old hotel that I used to stay in during shooting, see some old
friends and I'm very excited about that. Then it's my father's 75th birthday
in Connecticut and I'm going to take my son [11-year-old August] to that.
And then my son will come down with me to Jamaica, if he'll fly. He's been
watching Lost and now he doesn't want to fly! Especially Sydney to LA - it's
the flight that will go down.
We hear you work ridiculous hours on NCIS. Is it hard to create family time
with your son because of that?
It's really hard. It takes its toll. Fortunately August's mother [actress
Amelia Heinle] works on a daytime soap in LA called The Young And The
Restless and she just got married to a lovely guy named Thad Luckinbill. And
so August has a really solid home there, and I get my weekends when I'm
there. We go to basketball games and we make home movies and go for hikes
but, yeah, it is hard. It's not ideal.
I guess you work hard at your career to ensure your child's future, but then
it's finding that balance to spend the time with them too?
It's a little like being in the military - although nothing that noble!
Any parent working hard to create a career could identify, though...
Yeah, I guess. I'll get home at five in the morning on Saturday having
started the week Monday morning at 6am. So Saturday and Sunday is my time to
spend with my family. But it's also my time to reload, just recover from
exhaustion. So, if I don't get a few hours sleep on that Saturday before I
get August, then I'm dragging my feet with him. Again, I don't see a way
around it, I just try to let him know as much as possible that he is loved.
And I haven't made any more children because I didn't know when I was 26
that this was so hard. When I was 26 I kind of figured, "Hey, you just do
it." I mean, God, the ignorance of youth.
Fatherhood is great, though?
Oh it's wonderful. I mean, I'd love to have more children. But I tell you,
dating is really hard because I work all week and then weekends, I want to
see my son. I mean, sometimes there's press and stuff on the weekends that
you can't do during the week and I got to bed at around seven or eight on
Sunday night. So I have Saturday night. It's my one night. And I have four
Saturdays a month. And two of those I have August. So I only have two nights
to go out on a date. And usually one of those nights I want to see my
friends. So its like, "What girl is going to go out one night a month with
you? Who's going to put up with that?" It was easy doing Dark Angel and
going out with Jessica [Alba] because obviously we worked on the same show
and we lived together and that works. But it's hard when that ends. But I
remember once I was working in Australia and Jessica was doing Honey in
Toronto and she's at the MTV Australia Video Music Awards and, you know...
How was it seeing her again at the TV Week Logies?
I hadn't seen her for a couple of years. It had been years since I'd talked
to her. And, yeah, it was interesting to have that moment of, "Oh, how are
you?" when you see someone that you've spent a great deal of time with. I
mean, we spent a few years together, but we spent an intense amount of time
together. And you don't catch up on that in a fleeting moment on the red
carpet.
How did you approach it then?
I said whatever I said, probably, "You're doing great." Or "Good onya!" And
she said, "Shut up" and hit me in the arm. No, it was nice to see her.
Clearly it was a long time ago and there are no ghosts. It's not a haunted
area. At least for me. it's not - I can't speak for her, but I don't believe
it is. She's in a very happy relationship and has moved on. But because [our
meeting was] attended by a certain amount of curiosity that does heighten it
in an unusual and awkward and false way. Really, if you were just walking
down the street and you bumped into your ex at the mall it would be more
like, "Oh, hey." But when you're backstage at an awards show in a foreign
country and everybody's watching and then you get asked about it on the
couch with Hamish and Andy and then Fifi Box asks you about it onstage - is
there any clean way out of that? Probably not. But I look forward to seeing
what she's going to do with her career.
Do you read your own press?
I try not to look at any press. Initially I looked just to make sure I
didn't do anything dreadful. I mean, I have learned a couple of things not
to talk about. As it goes there are a few, "Boohoo, go cry in a bag of
money" stories. Like, "Are you kidding me? Are you actually moaning about
this?" Talking about working long hours and blah blah blah is a dangerous
thing to get into because I'm living a dream life with a dream job and, even
though there are some downsides, it's amazing. Especially being on a show
like NCIS that's actually really well received around the world. It's a
charmed little time and I cherish it. I know that it goes away, so I don't
pretend to be in charge of it anymore. It just happened. It's like a
beautiful day, it could rain tomorrow, but I am enjoying the weather right
now.
Sydney must be sentimental for you because you landed the job on NCIS when
you were here a few years back...
That's right. I was staying at the Quay Grand Hotel in Circular Quay. My
agent called me from the States and said, "Look out the window. See the Park
Hyatt right across? That's where [NCIS creator] Don Bellisario is staying.
Call over there and see if you can get him." So I called the Park Hyatt and
asked for Don Bellisario's room and they actually put me through. Then there
was a very funny conversation where he didn't quite understand who I was or
why I was calling, but he invited me to dinner after I explained that I was
an actor, working with Peter Bogdanovich on a TV special in the city, and
had heard he was here and wanted to meet him. So it was all rather
unorthodox and it continued along those unorthodox lines. But we got along
famously and in the end he said, "I think you should be Tony DiNozzo."
Did you have a hand in creating the way Tony is onscreen?
The character that existed on the page was very different in the beginning
and even at the time Don kept saying to me, "I don't know where this
character is going." So we worked really hard the first year to try to find
DiNozzo. And boy, did we find him. [Laughs.]
How did that happen for you?
It was kind of a slow boil. Filmmaking is a collaborative thing - there are
20 people directly involved in making sure things go smoothly in a scene and
you can screw all of them up with one scratch of a microphone, by going off
your mark, by turning out of the light. And I've always been the kind of
[person] who wants to make sure everyone's happy. I decided to approach this
job - not to p**s everybody off but, again, I didn't warn anybody either, so
I probably did p**s people off - but I decided that he was irreverent. And
he didn't care about all that stuff, so I couldn't care about all that
stuff. It was kind of an exercise in random freedom. And it worked because
what ended up happening is that people were furious. The other actors were
furious, the sound department... I mean, there were people who didn't know
me from my previous jobs who thought this is how I must always be.
And are you?
No. That's why I never trust meeting anybody on the red carpet. Because if
someone's horrible to you, you think they're just terrible. But really
they're being led around and they're probably in a terrible mood and maybe
their wife just left them for their best friend - you don't know what
pre-existing conditions there are for the person you meet. But having said
all that, Tony DiNozzo was created from a carefree and irreverent place, so
it's kind of the best job I've ever had. And the only character that I
really truly feel like I had a strong hand in making the right choice for.
So people have realised you're not really a troublemaker in real life now?
I think some people have realised it and other people never realised it. But
it was about being unapologetic in your job. Which is how DiNozzo is. I just
decided not to worry about everybody else's feelings because they're big
boys and girls and we're all here to do a professional job, so we're going
to get on with it. And those who don't think I'm being very professional or
nice? Well, it's not my problem. Some of the people in the beginning were
very concerned. Now that we're 100 episodes along, people understand what's
going on.
Has anybody lost it with you on set?
Sasha Alexander - who played Kate in the first two seasons - used to get
furious with me. We're really good friends, but she used to get really
p***ed off because I would change what I was doing in the scene as I went.
She was like, "Help me out here!" And I'd be like, "I'm experimenting." And
she's like,"Well it's not a laboratory, Mr Hyde!" And then it became part of
the show that she was frustrated with me, but that frustration was born out
of the working dynamic.
Didn't Gibbs' [Mark Harmon] habit of hitting DiNozzo on the head come from
you making Mark furious with you on set?
Gibbs hitting me on the back of the head was from me screwing around during
filming and that was actually Mark hitting Michael, not Gibbs hitting
DiNozzo. And the crew laughed and it got shown in the dailies and then it
got cut into the show and then the head slap became this thing. It really
was born out of frustration with my not behaving.
Thank you to
csa at NCIS Special Ops for the info. Here's the link,
nw.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=268688