Although Michael Weatherly is now the main man within the CBS authentic Bull, the actor’s followers will at all times bear in mind him as Special Agent Tony DiNozzo of NCIS. For over a decade, he performed second-in-command to Mark Harmon’s Agent Gibbs and boasted a slow-boiling romance with Cote de Pablo’s Ziva David.
Michael Weatherly was a part of the forged that got here to outline the procedural — the unique members who will at all times be the key to the present’s early success. Nonetheless, might you think about if one other character was in NCIS means again when? What about Jail Break star Wentworth Miller? In accordance with Michael Weatherly, a Wentworth Miller-type actor might have been what the present wanted in its early days. Let’s break down what Weatherly stated, and the way he defined his reasoning.
Michael Weatherly talks ‘NCIS’ and viewership demographics
Some time again, throughout an interview with The Futon Critics, Michael Weatherly mentioned the present’s attraction, and the way NCIS got here to assert demographics exterior its authentic viewership. Whereas NCIS was a Jag spinoff that originally attracted the 50-65-year-old demographic, its humor and character focus started to draw a youthful adolescent demographic throughout time. Weatherly defined:
As a result of I believe we’ve strip-mined everybody from 50 to 65. [Laughs.] I believe we’ve discovered each single one. I don’t assume we now have to promote to them anymore. It could be a disservice to push ourselves into that.
And I additionally assume that surprisingly, children, 14, 15-year-old children, that is precisely the age that I used to be watching ‘Magnum, P.I.’ and fully having fun with the sort of foolish banter, like “is that how grown-ups speak?…the curiosity from teenage eyeballs could be, “I don’t actually perceive the plot so it should be grownup and complicated.”
The Futon Critic
And although Michael Weatherly realized the present’s potential to attraction to a various group of viewers, he famous some of the troublesome demographics to crack — girls aged 18-34, and he defined that they might be the “final one” to signal on.
Michael Weatherly on what a Wentworth Miller-type actor might have dropped at ‘NCIS’
Michael Weatherly joked that girls aged 18-34 would be part of the present when American Idol went off the air, and when the required casting passed off. He said:
After which the final one which we’ll get is girls between the ages of 18-34, that would be the final, that’s the toughest one to crack. And I don’t understand how we’re going to do it. I believe we now have to attend for ‘American Idol’ to go off the air earlier than that really occurs.
Oh, and we’ll even have to rent an extremely enticing 23-year-old like Wentworth Miller-type man. And have him in jeopardy every week together with his shirt off. [Laughs.] I’ll be 45 or one thing, I dunno at that time and we’ll be within the squad room going, “Is that man bare and chained to a serial killer once more!” [Laughs.] “Not one other babe in jeopardy!”
The Futon Critic
Michael Weatherly is a little bit of a jokester, so it goes with out saying that he could not have genuinely supported this concept because the end-all-be-all greatest strategy to appeal to a demographic the present struggled to convey on initially. Nonetheless, not many would have complained if Wentworth Miller joined the present, as he has proved himself fairly adept at action-oriented dramas.
