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

With NCIS, your character toes a very delicate line between providing most of the show's clever banter and also finding himself in the heart of the show's action. Was it hard to find a natural balance between the jokes and the more intense action of the show?

In the beginning it was difficult. I had done an action show before this with Jessica Alba for the pre-Avatar, post-Titanic James Cameron [Dark Angel] and I played a character in a wheelchair who never smiled. I didn't have a pompadour on that show but I had some other Kevin Bacon-like hairstyle and what I learned from that experience was that it's not fun watching a character be so glum. So, Rule One for me when I dove into NCIS was to be loose and to have a twinkle in my eye with everything because it is slightly ridiculous that we're solving these crimes in 43 minutes. That was kind of my approach in the beginning -- just to mix it up and have fun. I've always been drawn to comedy. Steve Martin and David Letterman were my heroes and I really felt strongly like I was more of a comedian when I first started acting. The actors I gravitated towards, like Cary Grant and Tom Hanks, they were played so well between the cracks -- they were scoundrels a little bit. So playing such a serious fellow on Dark Angel was really not so much my thing. I am much more prone to take my pants off at a party and jump in the pool.

Speaking of taking your pants off, I caught your episode of the Bonnie Hunt Show when you slid down the fireman's pole. Whose idea was that?

I talked to Pauley Perrette [Weatherly's NCIS costar] right after it aired and she said, "Michael Weatherly, you got nervous and took your pants off." As the lovely people who work with me know, any time I am feeling uncomfortable or nervous or on the

spot, in order to defuse the tension, I will often remove my pants.

Well, I'm sure that made a lot of Bonnie's audience very happy.

[Chuckles] It's been a year of celebration for me so I am not exactly the most...I'm leaning more towards Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski than Jeff Bridges in American Heart. Right now, I'm moving more towards Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, but spending my time alone in a hotel room with a bottle of Jack Daniels is not probably how I want to end up. Jeff Bridges has that uncanny ability to swing back and forth with his weight. In American Heart he was awesome and cut and physically sort of imposing, to being in Lebowski?

Have the producers hinted that maybe you should move back towards an American Heart Jeff Bridges body type?

No, I have about a twenty-pound swing at this point that I'm working. After seven years of NCIS I think the audience understands that [my character] Tony is a guy that eats pizza and hamburgers and at this point, is not Mario Lopez?

As an actor, can't that 20 pound swing be a good asset line on your resume though?

[Laughs] Speaks French, can ski and also has the ability to put 20 pounds quickly. To that end, the viewers in the Bonnie Hunt studio were able to see what my trainer Bob Harper -- you know Bob Harper from The Biggest Loser?

That's your trainer?

Well he was my trainer about ten years ago and he got a load of me at that point and he said, "Mr. Weatherly, we are going to lose these college girl thighs." I thought he meant that I had to start shaving my legs! What he really meant was that they were large-ish. If you ever run into him, tell him Michael Weatherly says hello because we got along like cows on fire. I need to get into some Bradley Cooper shape, I am working on it.

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