“He was so loose and free.” NCIS star Michael Weatherly has revealed which of his former co-stars inspired his portrayal of Tony DiNozzo.
Weatherly, who played the film-loving agent on the flagship series for 13 seasons, left the show with his daughter Tali after the believed death of his partner, Ziva David.
On his new podcast, NCIS: Off Duty, Weatherly shared that his Dark Angel co-star Jensen Ackles, who played soldier Alec McDowell, influenced his portrayal of Tony.
“He was so loose and free, and I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll imitate him a little bit,’ and I’m such a bad mimic it doesn’t matter because no one will ever recognize that I’m doing Jensen Ackles,” Weatherly explained.
He further elaborated on his process: “I started coming in with all these ideas, watching all these movies with Cary Grant and thinking, ‘What did he do? How do I do that?’ and applying so many things to it.”
Weatherly added, “I would do Tom Hanks, I would do Alec Baldwin from Glengarry Glen Ross, whatever came into my mind to amuse myself, and pretty much p*** off everyone that I was working with.”