Michael Weatherly Once Quipped He Should’ve Left ‘NCIS’ Years Before He Did
NCIS star Michael Weatherly left the long-running procedural after 13 years on the show. But Weatherly once joked that the show might’ve benefited from an even earlier departure.
Michael Weatherly said he overstayed his welcome on ‘NCIS’
Weatherly agonized a bit over leaving NCIS. He’d built up a passionate fanbase in his 13 years on the hit show, and had a close professional bond with a few of his co-workers. Speaking with Extra, Weatherly confided that he had an epiphany sometime before his final season on the show. Weatherly jotted down ideas about his character Tony DiNozzo, and realized through his brainstorming that the special agent might’ve run its course.
“I wrote down a long series of ideas and feelings and everything. And I realized, ‘Oh, DiNozzo has to go.’ Like, it’s time for him to graduate,” Weatherly said.
Weatherly was gearing up to star in his own network series Bull. But in a resurfaced interview with Entertainment Tonight, he asserted that he was looking forward to some downtime. He also suggested that he might’ve stayed on the series a bit too long, and joked that he regretted not leaving sooner.
“The character had to leave at some point,” he said. “I should’ve left years ago, but I was having so much fun I overstayed my welcome horribly — like that guest who won’t leave and keeps digging into your fridge.”
Michael Weatherly was afraid of getting fired from ‘NCIS’ in the earlier seasons
Not too long ago, Sean Murray described what it was like working with Weatherly over the years. Murray was cast as agent Timothy McGee, who was partners and friends with DiNozzo. But Murray confided that the two might’ve had a bit too much fun when they were together.
“We were paired up early when I was in Season 1, but I remember us doing some stuff and him going completely off book and basically doing this wild Bill Murray impression from Caddyshack and the whole thing that he was doing. They printed this shot and said, okay, moving on,” Murray told TV Line.
But after thinking about it, Weatherly told Murray that he worried his antics might’ve cost him his job. Only to find out that NCIS execs enjoyed Weatherly’s improvisations.
“I just remember going and sitting in the cast chairs with Michael, and Michael turning to me and he goes, ‘I think I may get fired. I think I may get fired for what I just did,'” Murray recalled. “Because none of it was in the actual script. And then we got word back that they really liked it and to do more of it. So that was kind of a fun thing. And I don’t want to make it sound like everything Michael and I did was not in the script. Of course that’s not the case, but we kind of added and extrapolated onto that stuff and had a lot of fun, and a lot of that made the show in that first decade.”
When Michael Weatherly thought about returning to ‘NCIS’
Weatherly’s time with DiNozzo is far from over. Recently, it was announced that both he and Cote de Pablo will be returning in their own NCIS spin-off show. The series will air on Paramount+, and their casting indicates DiNozzo’s relationship with Ziva David may be further explored.
In an interview with Deadline, CBS President David Stapf revealed that DiNozzo and de Pablo were considering returning for a while.
“Michael and Cote have been talking about this show for years and years and years. So they were the ones that cooked up the rough edges of the idea, went to [writer] John McNamara, along with us, saying, we’d love to do this show. And the timing was right,” Stapf said.
Stapf shared that Weatherly had even been planning tinkering with a NCIS return when he was still on Bull.
“They had started talking about it before, somewhere after they had both left NCIS. Put yourself in their shoes,” Stapf added. “They’re constantly getting hit up by fans as to, oh my god, I miss you. When are you going to be back together, what happened to your child and all that stuff. And so, again, I keep saying it but there was an organic reason for this show to exist, it was almost like a fan demand for it.”
