1:54 pm - 08/19/2012
Michael Weatherly at a grocery store in West Hollywood on August 18, 2012.
Pauley Perrette at the Teachers Rock benefit on August 13, 2012.
Pauley Perrette, Rocky Carroll, and Brian Dietzen at Project Angel Food's 17th Annual Angel Awards 2012 on August 18, 2012.
There are a lot of pieces to put back together in the new season of NCIS — literally and figuratively. Need proof? Check out this exclusive first photo from the show’s upcoming tenth season.
Abby (Pauley Perrette), who we last saw getting tackled by Gibbs right before a bomb rocked NCIS HQ, is seen looking a little dazed — and who can blame her? Look at the destruction behind her!
But if you think the action stops with the bomb, you’re surely mistaken, according to executive producer Gary Glasberg. “It literally picks up two hours after the explosion, and it’s an action-packed episode of television. I packed a lot in there,” he says. “It’s an emotional roller coaster, and it’s all about the manhunt for Harper Dearing (Richard Schiff). It gets really personal between Gibbs and Dearing.”
NCIS is getting a new Leroy Jethro — who'll look a lot like Lando Calrissian! Don't worry, TV's top series isn't replacing uber popular lead Mark Harmon in his role. Rather, Star Wars veteran Billy Dee Williams will appear as another Leroy Jethro — who Leroy Jethro Gibbs was named for. In an October episode, Williams will play LJ, a World War II veteran and close friend of the Gibbs clan.
"This is a very rich, emotional story and we couldn't be happier to have Billy Dee Williams bringing this character to life," executive producer Gary Glasberg tells me exclusively. "Mr. Williams appeared in some of my favorite films from Lady Sings the Blues and Brian's Song to the Star Wars saga [The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi]. Watching him work with Mark Harmon and Ralph Waite [as Gibbs' father, Jack] will be a real treat."
Sasha Alexander is nothing if not brave. After all, this is the same actress — currently starring as medical examiner Maura Isles on Season 3 of TNT's smash procedural Rizzoli & Isles — who walked away from a lead role on NCIS after only two seasons. She married the son of legendary Italian sex symbol Sophia Loren, a gig not for the faint of heart. And today, Alexander, 39, is swinging upside down from a trapeze suspended far above the Santa Monica Pier — her suggestion — despite admitting that she's spooked by heights. We set out to investigate what fuels her fearlessness.
TV Guide Magazine: When you quit the plum part as NCIS Agent Caitlin Todd in 2005, did everyone think you were nuts?
Alexander: Yeah. People don't realize that on a network show, you make 24 episodes a year — that's 10½ months a year, 17 hours a day. It's hard core. Plus, people really loved the character, and the way they did it was really shocking...it was a bullet to the head, you know?
TV Guide Magazine: Any regrets?
Alexander: I really firmly believe in my heart that I would not be where I am today — happily married, with two kids, doing things creatively that I want — if I had stayed. I didn't want to wake up and be in my forties and go, "Oh, my gosh!" But people don't understand.
TV Guide Magazine: Let's travel even further back on your résumé — to a little place called Dawson's Creek. You played James Van Der Beek's older love interest! Do tell...
Alexander: I was so fascinated by how these very young people — James and Josh [Jackson] and Katie [Holmes] and Michelle [Williams] — were dealing with being teenagers and going through all that. Fangirls were really jealous of me, like, "What's he like to kiss?" And I'm like, "Good?" What do you say?
TV Guide Magazine: So how'd the role in Rizzoli & Isles come to be?
Alexander: After NCIS, I wanted to be really diligent about picking characters I want to play every week and that show all sides of me. They brought me in to read with Angie [Harmon] — we'd never met, but we immediately clicked.
TV Guide Magazine: The show hinges on the chemistry between you as best friends — a bond that was tested earlier this season. How would you describe the dynamic?
Alexander: There's a friction, a fieriness, that I think is good. I feel like, this season, we've really hit an amazing stride together...there's a looseness, a real synergy. Jane and Maura rebuilding their trust [after Jane shot Maura's biological gangster father] has made things much stronger.
TV Guide Magazine: Who's your real-life Rizzoli?
Alexander: She's an actress — Jessica Capshaw from Grey's Anatomy. We met 12, 13 years ago because people would always say, "You remind me of my friend Jessica," and it was the same for her about me. So many people said it mutually that finally we saw each other at an audition and she said, "Hey, do you mind waiting for me? Let's go have a coffee." And that was it. She's the godmother to my daughter, I'm the godmother to her son. She's hilarious.
TV Guide Magazine: How did you and writer-director Edoardo Ponti get together?
Alexander: We met at film school at USC. He was always lovely — he had a smile that gave me enormous comfort, even though I didn't know him. Eight years later, I'd worked an all-nighter on NCIS and I was sitting in a restaurant eating breakfast with a hat on, and he walked up to my table and said, "Sasha, do you remember me?"
TV Guide Magazine: What's it like having a bombshell for a mother-in-law?
Alexander: The first time we met, it was intimidating. This was six months in. But the minute I walked in, she gave me a hug and a kiss. She's an extremely warm person. She's phenomenal; she's stunning. She loves to eat and sleep and live. When we go out, we have Prosecco, chocolate and everything in between. It's funny: I took her to the airport yesterday, and she was like, "What is this book everyone's talking about?" I bought her Fifty Shades of Grey and told her she needs to read it.
Question: There’s been a lot of talk about a Tiva conversation on NCIS, but what about the other trapped pair, Gibbs and Abby?
Don’t they have anything to talk about? Will they be in any shape to talk at all? Please, give us some scoop! —Leni Ausiello: It’s interesting, Leni. While everyone is fretting over the fate of this agent or that one, has anyone stopped to think what the season-ending explosion means for the squad room itself? Series boss Gary Glasberg tells us the HQ will “miraculously be rebuilt” to look “pretty much” the same as it ever was, though its signature orange scheme may prove to be one casualty. “There’s a whole storyline in Episode 2 about that,” he says, “the color of the walls.”
Hi Sandra. Inquiring minds want to know if you have any upcoming scoops for Tony DiNozzo’s character in season 10 of NCIS. Thanks! — Mel
Well, first we’ll spend some time in the elevator — you know, where Tony and Ziva were trapped after the explosion. Afterward, look for a possible new love for Tony. “I think Tony’s arc continues where we left it [last] season. I think Tony is trying to figure out what he wants from life,” says Glasberg. “We had the E.J. thing, but I think it’s time for Tony to maybe find someone special. We’ll see. He’s doing some thinking.” But is this a person we’ve met before? Or someone new? “Maybe a little bit of both,” he teases. AH!
‘NCIS’: THERAPY FOR THE GANG?
The NCIS team has been through a lot of tough times together — but could the aftermath of last year’s finale explosion include some deep emotional and psychological consequences? That’s what one guest star will be tasked with finding out in the second episode of the upcoming tenth season. “A head-shrinker is coming to assess the mental status of our people,” star Michael Weatherly reveals. “And I don’t think anyone on this team should ever get looked at too closely by a psychiatrist.”
Weatherly assesses: Between Ducky “who talks to dead bodies,” Abby “who’s strung out on Caf-Pow,” DiNozzo’s “series issues,” McGee dad’s troubles, Gibb’s basement of boats and bourbon, and Ziva’s “almost Shakespearean” daddy issues, he laughs, “we are a motley crew of headcases.” “So, yes, there is fallout [from the explosion]. It is dealt with and investigated in the unique fashion of NCIS — liberal doses of drama and comedy.”
To elaborate in the drama department, executive producer Gary Glasberg tells me fans can expect Abby to reach out to her brother early in the season as she deals with trauma following the explosion. “It’s a beautiful couple of scenes, and we’re really excited about it,” he says. So am I! Is it Sept. 25 yet?
Have you heard anything more about the Tony-Ziva elevator scenes coming up on NCIS? — Kristin
ADAM: I have. "The elevator scenes are so good," executive producer Gary Glasberg says. But more importantly, post-bombing trauma may bring the duo closer than ever before. "[Tony and Ziva] can't help but be affected by this in a certain way, and they will continue to reach out to each other because of the connection they have as friends and as coworkers," Glasberg says. "There are definitely 'moments.' I'd like to take things a little further along than we have [in the past]."
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
Source 4
Source 5
Source 6
Source 7
Source 8
Source 9
Source 10
Source 11
Source 12
NCIS megapost
Michael Weatherly at a grocery store in West Hollywood on August 18, 2012.
Pauley Perrette at the Teachers Rock benefit on August 13, 2012.
Pauley Perrette, Rocky Carroll, and Brian Dietzen at Project Angel Food's 17th Annual Angel Awards 2012 on August 18, 2012.
There are a lot of pieces to put back together in the new season of NCIS — literally and figuratively. Need proof? Check out this exclusive first photo from the show’s upcoming tenth season.
Abby (Pauley Perrette), who we last saw getting tackled by Gibbs right before a bomb rocked NCIS HQ, is seen looking a little dazed — and who can blame her? Look at the destruction behind her!
But if you think the action stops with the bomb, you’re surely mistaken, according to executive producer Gary Glasberg. “It literally picks up two hours after the explosion, and it’s an action-packed episode of television. I packed a lot in there,” he says. “It’s an emotional roller coaster, and it’s all about the manhunt for Harper Dearing (Richard Schiff). It gets really personal between Gibbs and Dearing.”
NCIS is getting a new Leroy Jethro — who'll look a lot like Lando Calrissian! Don't worry, TV's top series isn't replacing uber popular lead Mark Harmon in his role. Rather, Star Wars veteran Billy Dee Williams will appear as another Leroy Jethro — who Leroy Jethro Gibbs was named for. In an October episode, Williams will play LJ, a World War II veteran and close friend of the Gibbs clan.
"This is a very rich, emotional story and we couldn't be happier to have Billy Dee Williams bringing this character to life," executive producer Gary Glasberg tells me exclusively. "Mr. Williams appeared in some of my favorite films from Lady Sings the Blues and Brian's Song to the Star Wars saga [The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi]. Watching him work with Mark Harmon and Ralph Waite [as Gibbs' father, Jack] will be a real treat."
Sasha Alexander is nothing if not brave. After all, this is the same actress — currently starring as medical examiner Maura Isles on Season 3 of TNT's smash procedural Rizzoli & Isles — who walked away from a lead role on NCIS after only two seasons. She married the son of legendary Italian sex symbol Sophia Loren, a gig not for the faint of heart. And today, Alexander, 39, is swinging upside down from a trapeze suspended far above the Santa Monica Pier — her suggestion — despite admitting that she's spooked by heights. We set out to investigate what fuels her fearlessness.
TV Guide Magazine: When you quit the plum part as NCIS Agent Caitlin Todd in 2005, did everyone think you were nuts?
Alexander: Yeah. People don't realize that on a network show, you make 24 episodes a year — that's 10½ months a year, 17 hours a day. It's hard core. Plus, people really loved the character, and the way they did it was really shocking...it was a bullet to the head, you know?
TV Guide Magazine: Any regrets?
Alexander: I really firmly believe in my heart that I would not be where I am today — happily married, with two kids, doing things creatively that I want — if I had stayed. I didn't want to wake up and be in my forties and go, "Oh, my gosh!" But people don't understand.
TV Guide Magazine: Let's travel even further back on your résumé — to a little place called Dawson's Creek. You played James Van Der Beek's older love interest! Do tell...
Alexander: I was so fascinated by how these very young people — James and Josh [Jackson] and Katie [Holmes] and Michelle [Williams] — were dealing with being teenagers and going through all that. Fangirls were really jealous of me, like, "What's he like to kiss?" And I'm like, "Good?" What do you say?
TV Guide Magazine: So how'd the role in Rizzoli & Isles come to be?
Alexander: After NCIS, I wanted to be really diligent about picking characters I want to play every week and that show all sides of me. They brought me in to read with Angie [Harmon] — we'd never met, but we immediately clicked.
TV Guide Magazine: The show hinges on the chemistry between you as best friends — a bond that was tested earlier this season. How would you describe the dynamic?
Alexander: There's a friction, a fieriness, that I think is good. I feel like, this season, we've really hit an amazing stride together...there's a looseness, a real synergy. Jane and Maura rebuilding their trust [after Jane shot Maura's biological gangster father] has made things much stronger.
TV Guide Magazine: Who's your real-life Rizzoli?
Alexander: She's an actress — Jessica Capshaw from Grey's Anatomy. We met 12, 13 years ago because people would always say, "You remind me of my friend Jessica," and it was the same for her about me. So many people said it mutually that finally we saw each other at an audition and she said, "Hey, do you mind waiting for me? Let's go have a coffee." And that was it. She's the godmother to my daughter, I'm the godmother to her son. She's hilarious.
TV Guide Magazine: How did you and writer-director Edoardo Ponti get together?
Alexander: We met at film school at USC. He was always lovely — he had a smile that gave me enormous comfort, even though I didn't know him. Eight years later, I'd worked an all-nighter on NCIS and I was sitting in a restaurant eating breakfast with a hat on, and he walked up to my table and said, "Sasha, do you remember me?"
TV Guide Magazine: What's it like having a bombshell for a mother-in-law?
Alexander: The first time we met, it was intimidating. This was six months in. But the minute I walked in, she gave me a hug and a kiss. She's an extremely warm person. She's phenomenal; she's stunning. She loves to eat and sleep and live. When we go out, we have Prosecco, chocolate and everything in between. It's funny: I took her to the airport yesterday, and she was like, "What is this book everyone's talking about?" I bought her Fifty Shades of Grey and told her she needs to read it.
Question: There’s been a lot of talk about a Tiva conversation on NCIS, but what about the other trapped pair, Gibbs and Abby?
Don’t they have anything to talk about? Will they be in any shape to talk at all? Please, give us some scoop! —Leni Ausiello: It’s interesting, Leni. While everyone is fretting over the fate of this agent or that one, has anyone stopped to think what the season-ending explosion means for the squad room itself? Series boss Gary Glasberg tells us the HQ will “miraculously be rebuilt” to look “pretty much” the same as it ever was, though its signature orange scheme may prove to be one casualty. “There’s a whole storyline in Episode 2 about that,” he says, “the color of the walls.”
Hi Sandra. Inquiring minds want to know if you have any upcoming scoops for Tony DiNozzo’s character in season 10 of NCIS. Thanks! — Mel
Well, first we’ll spend some time in the elevator — you know, where Tony and Ziva were trapped after the explosion. Afterward, look for a possible new love for Tony. “I think Tony’s arc continues where we left it [last] season. I think Tony is trying to figure out what he wants from life,” says Glasberg. “We had the E.J. thing, but I think it’s time for Tony to maybe find someone special. We’ll see. He’s doing some thinking.” But is this a person we’ve met before? Or someone new? “Maybe a little bit of both,” he teases. AH!
‘NCIS’: THERAPY FOR THE GANG?
The NCIS team has been through a lot of tough times together — but could the aftermath of last year’s finale explosion include some deep emotional and psychological consequences? That’s what one guest star will be tasked with finding out in the second episode of the upcoming tenth season. “A head-shrinker is coming to assess the mental status of our people,” star Michael Weatherly reveals. “And I don’t think anyone on this team should ever get looked at too closely by a psychiatrist.”
Weatherly assesses: Between Ducky “who talks to dead bodies,” Abby “who’s strung out on Caf-Pow,” DiNozzo’s “series issues,” McGee dad’s troubles, Gibb’s basement of boats and bourbon, and Ziva’s “almost Shakespearean” daddy issues, he laughs, “we are a motley crew of headcases.” “So, yes, there is fallout [from the explosion]. It is dealt with and investigated in the unique fashion of NCIS — liberal doses of drama and comedy.”
To elaborate in the drama department, executive producer Gary Glasberg tells me fans can expect Abby to reach out to her brother early in the season as she deals with trauma following the explosion. “It’s a beautiful couple of scenes, and we’re really excited about it,” he says. So am I! Is it Sept. 25 yet?
Have you heard anything more about the Tony-Ziva elevator scenes coming up on NCIS? — Kristin
ADAM: I have. "The elevator scenes are so good," executive producer Gary Glasberg says. But more importantly, post-bombing trauma may bring the duo closer than ever before. "[Tony and Ziva] can't help but be affected by this in a certain way, and they will continue to reach out to each other because of the connection they have as friends and as coworkers," Glasberg says. "There are definitely 'moments.' I'd like to take things a little further along than we have [in the past]."
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
Source 4
Source 5
Source 6
Source 7
Source 8
Source 9
Source 10
Source 11
Source 12
Love Pauley's dress from the Teachers Rock event.
Yay for Billy Dee Williams! Can't wait for Tiva in the elevator.
Can't wait for next season!