Michael Weatherly

Michael-WeatherlyActor Michael Weatherly talks about creating his new character in Bull, his gratitude to CBS and his continued affection for NCIS.

For 13 seasons on NCIS, Michael Weatherly was known to viewers around the world as Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, the handsome, confident, street-smart, skilled, wisecracking, movie-loving agent who fought crime for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. When word leaked early last year that Weatherly had decided to leave NCIS, fans were bereft. But Weatherly understood his responsibility to the show and worked with the writers to craft a fitting exit for DiNozzo. Though fans were hoping that they would see Weatherly reprise DiNozzo in guest appearances on NCIS, it was announced that he would be the lead in a new show, Bull, about an intriguing, somewhat aloof, yet highly effective, trial consultant. Airing on CBS right after NCIS, Bull is one of the highest-rated new shows this season. Weatherly talks about creating this new character, his gratitude to CBS and his continued affection for NCIS.

WS: How did Bull come about and at what point did you become involved in the project?
WEATHERLY: I had made the decision to leave NCIS, and I was concentrating on developing a few things and squaring myself with the NCIS experience, making sure that [DiNozzo’s story] was resolved correctly. Another CBS drama was the last thing on my mind! Having said all that, I got a phone call about the script, which I read over a weekend in January 2016. I thought it was different than the police procedural stuff that I had done before. I loved the psychological aspect, and I loved who was involved in the show: Rodrigo García, who did In Treatment at HBO, Paul Attanasio, who played a very big role in bringing the TV show House to the world, and Steven Spielberg—we don’t have to say anything more about him! The really wild part of it was Dr. Phil McGraw, whom I had met before; I understood that he was an extremely interesting guy with a background in trial consultation and analysis. He had worked with Oprah and many other people and companies. I talked to my manager, and he said, This probably won’t happen, but let’s go through the motions. Lo and behold, within a very short period, I found myself on a set in New York City playing a guy named Bull, while I was still shooting NCIS. I was flying back every weekend to see my kids, and it’s really been a whirlwind since the end of NCIS and the beginning of Bull. I’m so excited that Bull has sold to over 200 territories and is going to get sampled by a huge number of people, and I hope they like it.

Bull is a show about human behavior as it pertains to jury selection, but it also asks, What’s the judge thinking? What are the witnesses thinking? In an election year like the one we’ve had, not just with the Trumpness but with the Brexit and what is happening all around the world, it seemed to be the right time for a show about human behavior.

WS: How did you prepare for the role and what research did you do?
WEATHERLY: I prepared by reading the script many times, which is usually your first clue. I’m a little bit of a lateral thinker and have been known to digress, so I let myself go and digress and I started watching a lot of different aspects of jury consulting. The O.J. Simpson documentary O.J.: Made in America was airing at the time. I watched that and found it so interesting that they used a jury consultant during that trial, someone who was very much like Jason Bull. I watched a lot of Italian movies, particularly Fellini. I felt there was something absurd and playful combined with cryptic storytelling. So I found myself thinking of Bull when I watched and La Dolce Vita, and that’s where Bull’s glasses came from. I was thinking of Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. It was a smorgasbord of little samples that I put myself through. What I found, through all of those different tiles that made up the ultimate mosaic of Jason Bull, was that he is a very compart­mented, fragmented person, who can conduct everyone else’s symphony but his own. And on some level he was a bit of a mystery even to himself. Then I thought, OK, I won’t make any more decisions about him until we start shooting. I learn more about him every episode. I try not to say he wouldn’t do something because we may think we know who we are, but then we find ourselves in a new situation and can be radically redefined by circumstances. To me, Bull is not Gibbs [Leroy Jethro Gibbs from NCIS], right? But I have this big poster of Marcello Mastroianni in the film The Stranger hanging in my dressing room, and any time I’m trying to put myself into the role of Jason Bull, I will spend a little time gazing at Marcello’s painted face in that poster. I’ll think, all right, a little bit cold, a little bit removed, a little bit sensual and playful.

I like to pull inspiration from unpredictable places because I find that juxtapositions can make a character more interesting. It’s my job now to make sure that the stories are as good as they can be, and that people are allowed to access Bull and go on a journey with him. We will see. It’s a funny thing when you are building a character, the way that he presents himself to the world—the glasses, the hairdo, the sweater that he wears underneath the suit, which is a bit of a therapist’s cardigan—is a very fastidious and specific series of choices. I find that Bull is all about that, which means I really can’t get lazy and relaxed when playing him. He’s the opposite of DiNozzo in a lot of ways, so that’s fun, too.

WS: How much research do the writers do and what consultants do you have on the show to make sure the trial analysis is accurate?
WEATHERLY: We have an executive producer on the show who has done jury consulting. I leave it up to the professionals to make sure that we’re doing things moderately truthfully. Anytime you are doing a medical show or a cop show, you have to compress time, so sometimes things can get a little unrealistic, but overall I’m always trying to make sure that the behavior is as realistic as possible.

WS: In a previous interview, you told me that you had a unique way of preparing for a scene on NCIS. You said that you didn’t work on the script the night before a shoot, rather, during a shoot you would listen very carefully to the other actors and get into the scene as the camera moved in from long shots to close-ups. Are you using the same approach on Bull?
WEATHERLY: It’s a totally different approach because DiNozzo was this big, crashing, noisy character and Bull is much more of a main sail or rudder. You need to know where you’re going with a character like Bull. A lot of acting is about solving a crossword puzzle, and for me, the best part is being challenged to make these connections and solve the puzzle and put all those things together, maybe not as the writer intended, but for the audience. It takes a huge amount of effort to prepare for Bull. It’s a harder job.

WS: As the lead actor, what atmosphere do you want on set? I’ve read that the NCIS set was extremely cordial and like a family. Are there elements of that set that you want to bring to Bull?
WEATHERLY: I do enjoy a very loose sense of camaraderie, and the feeling that we are all in this together. Whether you are a dolly grip or an electrician or a prop man or an actor, we are all there on set. The camera only shows the people wearing makeup, but there are a lot of people that make every episode of television come together—it’s a huge undertaking. So, given the size and the expense of the show, I do have a more relaxed approach to the on-set vibe, if you will. What that entails mostly is playing a little bit of music, making people laugh, reminding everyone that this is not brain surgery. My wife is a primary care doctor, and she reminds me all the time that acting is not brain surgery!

WS: You played Tony DiNozzo for 13 seasons. Was it difficult for you to make the transition to Jason Bull? Was there any wisecracking or anything about Tony that rose to the surface in your performance of Bull?
WEATHERLY: When you are playing somebody like DiNozzo there is definitely a habitual go-to, whether it’s comedy or facial expressions or the way you pitch your voice. So I did a lot of work, and over the first few episodes of Bull, I tried to hone that. I did a series called Dark Angel for a couple of years before NCIS. One of the biggest compliments I ever received on NCIS was when I was working with this actor and halfway through shooting a scene he said, Oh my God, you’re that guy from the Jessica Alba show—which had been off the air only a couple of years at that time. I said, Yeah, Dark Angel. And he said, I watched every episode. You were in the wheelchair and you were skinny [laughs] and you had glasses. I took it as high praise that I was invisible. It’s funny, people didn’t think I had a sense of humor when I was on Dark Angel, and then after playing DiNozzo, people thought I did. People always assume that you’re the character you are playing, and that’s fine; I have no issue with it. I’m just very grateful that CBS gave me the opportunity and had faith in me to try and create a guy named Bull. What a strange new world for them. It would have been much easier for CBS just to do DiNozzo 2.0—DiNozzo in Europe with his own team of agents. I wasn’t interested in doing that either, and CBS, very much to their credit, never tried to turn Bull into an NCIS kind of show. And I am the number one fan of NCIS. I’ve been touting it for a decade and a half. But Bull is a different show, and it can appeal to the same audience because there is resolution at the end of the episode and there is insight into why we do the things we do. There is also a colorful cast of characters that the audience can plug into and feel an affinity for. I don’t know if people see themselves in these characters, but that’s a tried-and-true formula for a lot of television.