NCIS Star Michael Weatherly on Playing Robert Wagner, His Appearance on The Cosby Show and His Trou-Dropping Habit

Did you have a lot of time in between takes to get to know each other?

We did and we've become good friends socially and I am going to go over to his

apartment today with my wife. We're going to have tea with R.J. and his wife Jill and talk

about stuff.

Is there anything you discovered from talking to him that you wish you had known before portraying him [pictured right]?

Well, as far as I can recall, this is the first and only time I've ever tried to play a real

person, which is a tricky business because you end up stuck with sort of an impression of someone as...well, I mean, how close can you ever really get. We were talking about the Late Shift and those actors playing Leno and Letterman, it's tough. If there is one thing I would concentrate more on with R.J., it's what a great listener and what a great raconteur and convivial gentleman he is. I think I was more playing what I had seen of him onscreen. As it turns out, I was not doing an impression of R.J. Wagner as much as I was doing an impression of the roles he played. It would be as if someone tried to do an impression of me by watching NCIS and that is very far from the truth, right?

You resemble him very much. Do you remember people telling you growing up that you looked like Mr. Wagner?

No one has ever ever really said I looked like him. When I was about 19, my stepmother said -- because this was back in the 80s -- that I had Robert Wagner's pompadour. I said, "What are you talking about? You mean the guy from Hart to Hart?"

Well if you're going to have someone's pompadour, I guess Robert Wagner's is the one to have.

You would be amazed at the pompadour that I was rocking in the first job I had on the soap opera called Loving, my first contract job.

You seemed to also be rocking that same pompadour on your episode of The Cosby Show. Do you remember anything about shooting that?

Oh well, of course, I had one line, they cut it. But that was my very first time on a set and they said, you know, you have to stand on a mark. That little piece of tape that you stand on is called a mark. I kept correcting them and telling them that my name was Michael and not Mark. They said, "No, no honey." I was a little green.

Do you remember what your line was?

No, not anymore, I'm sure it was pretty meaningless. But I will say that Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Keith Diamond, the actor playing Theo's roommate, were very generous with their time and nice to me. I was fresh out of drama school and had no idea what I was doing. They hustled me along and Bill Cosby tolerated my rookie behavior. It was great. Once you have The Cosby Show on your resume, you can keep going.

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