Sneak peek of tonight episode:

150th Episode Celebration + Interviews (a little bit different than previous video)

TV Guide interview to Michael and Robert! +

Inside Tv – Aol Television interview to Michael

TV Guide

An NCIS Father-Son Reunion

by Chris Willman  January 11, 2010

Robert Wagner is sitting with Michael Weatherly in a hotel bar and poses a question for an observer. “Is he doing me, or am I doing him?” asks the 79-year-old legend. “Have you figured it out yet?”

Good question. Wagner is the guest star on the 150th episode of NCIS (airing Jan. 12 at 8/7c on CBS), in which he plays the father of Weatherly’s Special Agent Tony DiNozzo. There is a sense in which, as DiNozzo Sr., he’s “doing” a paternal impression of the charmingly irascible DiNozzo Jr. that NCIS fans are familiar with, showing just how far the apple did or didn’t fall from the tree.

But Weatherly has been doing Wagner for a lot longer. He actually played the elder actor once in a 2004 TV movie about Natalie Wood that Peter Bogdanovich directed—something he says never came up when Wagner came onto the NCIS set. But even before that, he patterned himself after Wagner in ways both broad and small, as you’ll learn in this joint Q&A.

There may have been a bit of typecasting involved. Wagner spends much of the episode wandering around the office with Pauley Perrette or Cote de Pablo hanging on his arm. And when we first met him at the Pasadena hotel, sure enough, there he was with Perrette on his arm, in life, as on screen.

Forewarning: Weatherly did most of the talking, talking up Wagner’s godlike qualities, with Wagner just grinning and pointing at his younger counterpart, as if to say, “Can you believe this guy?”

WAGNER: I love this young man!

WEATHERLY: And the love is returned. Maybe with a little extra on top from me.

PASSERBY [to Wagner]: You’re the handsomest. You always have been, since [1954's] Prince Valiant.

WAGNER: Oh my God, I should have pulled out the wig for this character. That would have broken you up.

WEATHERLY: How about if we’re undercover in the next one? But we’re both in the Prince Valiant wigs?

WAGNER: That’d be good!

TV GUIDE MAGAZINE: Were you familiar with the NCIS universe or Tony’s character before they asked you?

WAGNER: Oh yes, I was familiar with it. I was also thrilled with the prospect of being his father. Many people had said to me “You look so much alike.” I was thrilled to be able to work with him, and with Mark Harmon. They wrote a nice range for me. They gave me an opportunity to have a lot of colors and aspects to my character that you don’t [immediately] understand, that you don’t get him, what he’s about, at first.

WEATHERLY: I said to you when we were doing it, for me professionally, it’s the zenith of 20 years for me, to play these moments and to find stuff that… I mean, there’s some broad, loose, fun stuff that we do, but there’s some poignant, deep places that we found.

Is there any bit of business in the episode that you most enjoyed?

WAGNER: I do have a favorite moment: at the end, when I tell him… [Sorry, redacted because it’s a spoiler.] Michael’s so wonderful at the end of that, when I leave and the camera’s on him.

WEATHERLY: In the first scene that we filmed together, Sr. is at Jr.’s desk, so RJ’s sitting at my desk, and he’s typing on the computer, and I’ve been banished from my desk and I’m at McGee’s desk. I’m champing at the bit and chafing, because I’m not used to being not in control in that area. And I make a move to go over to the desk, and without looking at me, RJ just gives me the hand, which sits me back down. Now, we both have German shepherd dogs. And that to me is the relationship in a nutshell. Gibbs is an alternate father figure, and it was interesting to play between these two father figures, and ping-pong back and forth. But you see who the real father is. He looks at me at one point later on in the show, and I’m like, “I can’t tell you that, Dad. That’s a top secret thing!” and he just gives me the look, and I just immediately fold and give him all the information.

Your Wagner fascination goes back a while.

WEATHERLY: You can go on hulu.com and watch It Takes a Thief, which I have watched quite a bit of. And some of the best stuff, it’s just cool-baby television, watching you walk around. That’s some good stuff, man! One year I bothered them so much, because I brought in a picture of RJ. Can I show him the picture? [He pulls out his iPhone, which has a color photo of Wagner from the late ‘60s.] I walked into the hair and makeup trailer—and this was a couple years ago—and I said “I have the hair that I want to do for next year.” And they were like “Oh, God. Weatherly’s got another hair idea.” I said “No no no. I’ve been watching this guy.”

WAGNER [looking at Weatherly’s iPhone]: I think that picture was taken by TV Guide! A while ago.

WEATHERLY: Well, it is fantabulistic. I wanted that haircut. So I went in there and they tried it on me, and… I don’t quite have the face. There’s sterling, and then there’s the kind of stuff you get at the Sav-On. You’re a good-looking man, RJ.

WAGNER: We should do a spinoff.

What line of business would you be in? Both on the side of law or running scams together?

WEATHERLY: I know what it is. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. And I’ve gotta go in and woo this girl, and you’re going over and you’re wooing that girl. And in the end it’s always the dowager that wants me up in her bedroom, and you end up with the 19-year-old, and I’m like “Dad!”

WAGNER: That’s not a bad idea.

WEATHERLY: You end up with Natalie Portman and somehow I’m making the moves on Olympia Dukakis.

We see a slightly different Tony in this episode.

WEATHERLY: I’ve had some great ones this season, I think starting with the first episode, which we started in July. I think that for me is one of my favorite experiences, shooting. Any time as an actor they inject a truth serum into your character, you have a great opportunity to do things. And having Robert Wagner portray Tony DiNozzo Sr. is very similar to the truth serum. Because of course in the presence of a family member, a powerful father figure, it brings out the real Tony. In front of his father he can’t be as glib and deflective as he normally is. So there’s this earnest quality.

A lot of fans have remarked on how goofy Tony has been for much of season 7. But some of them have said, well, wait, maybe that’s the setup for some more serious development. And that prediction kind of comes true with this episode, which directly addresses the whole “tears of a clown” theory.

WEATHERLY: I think we have a very loyal audience that watches week after week. I don’t know what the metrics are on it. But I think that when you have a character as volatile and capable of extraordinary silliness or extraordinary intensity, the audience gets a little confused. Like, well, is Tony really intense, and is he moving forward, or is he just a silly guy who can’t get his act together? And this kind of cuts it right down the center and exposes kind of the inner workings of it. We learn about Tony’s mother, we learn just a lot of things about him that were a mystery. I had certainly decided on some things, and the writers and I talked about it, so that all became more clear. But as we were making the episode, I thought, oh—I guess it’ll be a little different from here forward.

I actually spoke with a few writers yesterday who said they removed some silliness from some scenes [in future episodes], because they felt that after the RJ episode, that it just didn’t quite fit the same way. You know, there’s a sense of humor, and then there’s just abject absurd surreal silliness. Which I am a fan of! But it has a place.

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Aol Television

‘NCIS‘ fans know Michael Weatherly as charming goofball/special agent Tony DiNozzo but on the series’ 150th episode tonight on CBS, viewers will learn that beneath those jokes lie memories of a painful childhood — and unresolved feelings towards his father. Robert Wagner (aka R.J.) guest stars as Tony’s dad, Anthony Sr.

In a sense, working with Wagner was deja vu all over again for Weatherly; he portrayed the ‘Hart to Hart’ star and movie heartthrob in ‘The Mystery of Natalie Wood’, the made for TV movie about Wagner’s late movie star wife. Weatherly recently chatted with AOL about sharing air time with the screen legend and previewed the ‘NCIS’ episode that sheds new light on Tony.

What will we learn about your character in this episode?
A lot. We learn that Tony’s mother died when he was 8 years old and he was raised by an absentee father, who borders, maybe, on con man. The wealth that Tony grew up on maybe wasn’t the wealth he thought it was. He learns that his father did his best for his son. Sometimes you get mad at your parents because they behave in a way that you don’t like when you’re 12 or 13, but, later, you realize that they were just trying to get through their own life. The episode will shine a light on DiNozzo’s insecurities. We’ll see why he feels that Gibbs [Mark Harmon] is that father he never had.

Was this congruous with what you were playing all along?
Yes. I had a pretty good idea about Tony all the way through. This is very consistent with a lot of the thoughts I had on him.

After you met Robert, did you think you did him justice in your portrayal of him?
What you don’t learn about R.J. from the movies and reading the articles is that this is a guy whose heart is so big, wonderful and magnificent, it almost outshines the other wonderful things about him — his professionalism, the style. I think I would have enlarged his heart 10 times if I’d met him before I’d play him.

What was it like working with him?
I was nervous. The first day on the set with my throat was tense, my hands were clammy. He made me nervous, but within about 60 seconds he had me in the scene. Pauley Perrette came over and said to me, “Michael, you’re supposed to be acting with Robert — not staring at him.”

Had you found out if he’d seen your portrayal of him in the Natalie Wood movie?
No. We didn’t really talk about that. But I did read his book ‘Pieces of my Heart.’ It’s an incredible memoir and a testament to his nature. It’s not glib. R.J.s book is called ‘Pieces of My Heart’ – not ‘Hart.’ This is a guy who drank with Humphrey Bogart. He’s got some stories. As I was [recently] pulling into the parking lot at 6:58AM — and my call time was 7AM — I thought R.J. would have been here 45 minutes ago.

‘NCIS’ does gangbusters in the ratings. What’s the appeal of the show?
It starts with Mark Harmon. It’s about Gibbs and his surly, gruff exterior. Also, this band of crazy people around him — Ducky, Abby, Ziva, Tony, McGee and Palmer — everyone rocks and rolls around Gibbs. It’s like a clown car. Gibbs, without being unlikeable, is so solid and sure. He’s like a Clint Eastwood character. I think people like that. None of this happens without great writers and a great production team. The music is great. If you saw our show without the fancy stuff, it wouldn’t be quite the same show.

Most series after they’ve been around this long begin to lose steam. Why is ‘NCIS’ getting stronger?
I think the person to ask is the person who started watching a few years ago. They found us [in re-runs] and now watch new series. It’s a hard time in the country right now. The characters on are show are family and have each others backs. We’re not trying to run around and be fabulous. Our characters make mistakes. It’s not a vain show. We do have hair and makeup departments, but we’re not about our characters’ vanities. Mark wants the scene to work in the context of the story and in the context of the show.

How do you feel about going up against ‘American Idol’ when it returns?
We don’t worry too much about that stuff. One of the nice things about our show from the beginning is that we were never creatively made by committee. We were not designed by an accounting firm. We came out of [series creator] Don Bellisario’s head. Our audience is grandparents, their children and their children’s children.

Would you ever want Tony to be spun off?
[Wryly] I don’t know. What’s your idea? [Actually,] R.J. and I were talking about doing a TV version of ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ only the characters are fathers and sons. There’s the older dowager and her daughter, who’s like Grace Kelly. The twist is that I’ll end up with the dowager and R.J. ends up with the daughter!