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| Michael Weatherly with new co-star Geneva Carr in CBS' Bull. |
When Michael
Weatherly decided to leave NCIS after
a 13-season run, his respite turned out to be incredibly short lived. Weatherly’s Anthony DiNozzo said goodbye to
the Major Case Response Team on Tuesday night, May 19, and by Wednesday morning
the actor was on the red carpet at New York’s Carnegie Hall, talking about his
new character, trial consultant Dr. Jason Bull.
“I got about an 8-hour break,” Weatherly says with a wink.
Just a few
months earlier, as he was preparing for his final scenes on the megahit, CBS had
approached Weatherly with the new procedural drama Bull, whose lead character is based on the previous career of talk
show host Dr. Phil McGraw. Attracted by
the talent behind the new project – not only McGraw, but producer Steven
Spielberg and writer Paul Attanasio, creator of the acclaimed medical drama House, M.D. – Weatherly signed on to
play the brilliant and brash Bull – after a brief moment’s hesitation. The actor was already familiar with the real McGraw,
the founder of one of the most prolific trial consulting firms of all time, whom
he finds to be “a really fascinating character: part Machiavelli, part P.T.
Barnum. When we met, I asked him if he’d
ever had a moment of insecurity, and he just stared at me and said, ‘No.’” And
so, when offered the chance to portray McGraw’s alter ego, Weatherly admits
that “Initially I was scared, because I didn’t know if I could play such an
intense character. And then I realized
that that was why I should do it.”
Of course,
Weatherly’s version takes some artistic license – “I don’t have a bald cap and
a moustache waiting in my kit bag,” the actor jokes – but Bull is “inspired by the world that Dr. Phil understands so well.” Joining Dr. Bull within that milieu are
Freddy Rodriguez as Bull’s ex-brother-in-law Benny, the defense attorney at the
company’s mock trials; Geneva Carr as a neurolinguistics expert who honed her
skills working for the Department of Homeland Security; Annabelle Attanasio as
a helpful hacker; Chris Jackson as a stylist and image consultant; and Jaime
Lee Kirchner as a former NYPD detective-turned-private eye.
Bull’s team
works to analyze jurors’ backgrounds and behaviors, creating strategies to tip
the scales of justice in their clients’ favor; it’s a discipline that most of
us laymen never knew existed. As
Rodriguez enthuses, Bull brings us “a
side of the legal drama that I had never seen before.” In fact, Weatherly predicts, after watching
the show, most of us will never look at jury service the same way again: “The next time you serve, you’ll realize that
people are paying attention to you – noting where you went to school, and
whether you like cats or dogs.” Trial
consultants can sway us “by getting really granular on human behavior,” he
notes – “and every week we’ll investigate how it’s done.”
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