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There’s a Gary Cole for everyone.
Whether you know him from “The West Wing” or “Veep,” “The Good Wife” or “Office Space,” “Dodgeball” or “Midnight Caller,” you probably know his face.
For a time he was the “schoolyard hero”, appearing in “Cadet Kelly” with his daughter’s classmates. Hilary DuffHowever, these days his role as Alden Parker is long overdue. cbs Crime procedural “NCIS” that has him stuck on the street.
The show, which focuses on a US Navy investigative unit in Washington, DC, is currently airing season 23.
“It’s very powerful, that effect,” says Cole of the program’s dedicated broadcast audience. He added, “So a lot of people have followed the show and they’ve followed it, some of them have followed it forever.”
The character of Cole was brought in during season 19 to run the team after Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) left. In the Veterans Day special, a first for the franchise, “NCIS” and “NCIS: Origins” will come together with back-to-back episodes on Tuesday. A historical mystery in “Origins” — which includes Harmon’s guest role on the show based on Gibbs’ early career — will find its way into the modern day on “NCIS,” which airs directly after it.
associated Press Talked to Cole about the show’s success, the real service members he met and those classic “NCIS” freeze frames. This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: Was the popularity of “NCIS” a plus or a minus when you were thinking about taking the role?
Cole: I didn’t really pay attention to how big or small the audience would be, because things are so different today. I mean, nothing else in 25 years has made as big, huge an impact as a television show has in terms of its audience, where you can just be swallowed by an image.
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I’m old enough to say that I was on television when there were three channels here in the states. that was it. They were your choice. And once they were on and then off again once, maybe twice, if you were lucky, they were really gone.
Now… if you look deeper, you can find a lot of what he’s done throughout his career. It is being broadcast somewhere.
AP: Is there a show you wish would disappear and never be seen again?
Cole: Not so much a show. There are probably a few network movies of the week, as we used to call it, that I kind of skim on.
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By this I don’t mean the selection of material, although that was a part of it too. But it was a kind of laboratory for getting comfortable in front of the camera without doing a lot – if you’re on a series and it’s successful, your visibility is right there. If you’re learning a lot and making mistakes and improving on them, you don’t want to do it in front of everyone on a weekly basis.
AP: How did they turn Alden into you?
Cole: They didn’t want him to look like Gibbs. They definitely wanted, you know, they wanted someone that you could buy into as a leader. Our old producer, who has since retired, had a great line about the show, which was an inside joke, which is this: In the original “NCIS,” all the kids were eager to please the dad, i.e. Gibbs, right? They were wondering what his reaction was going to be and, you know, if they made a mistake or made a wrong move, would they be under the gun? You know, there was a little bit of apprehension around that. And so now she turned it around and said, what if dad goes away? And mad uncle has come? And how will they react to them? And they weren’t quite sure at first, like, “What’s the story with this guy?” …and I liked it.
AP: Have you talked to veterans since appearing on the show?
Cole: We have a great technical guy named Mike Smith, who has organized a number of field trips and interactions. Katrina (Lawco-star) and I visited an aircraft carrier about a year and a half ago and spent what they call family day. …And we actually go out into the ocean and they do what they do and show us literally planes landing, planes taking off. And we got to see things that typically, you know, civilians don’t get to see. And just being with the sailors and interacting with them. A lot of them knew the show. I knew a lot that I had done a lot more. We visited a real NCIS office here California,
AP: How do they feel in the (real) NCIS office?
Cole: They were very curious, but mostly about character things. They weren’t even worried about the procedures because they knew, you know, it’s a television show, right? So, but, what I realized when I got there is funny: Don’t tell anyone this, but I said, I looked at them and their average age, the guy who was leading them was probably 20 years younger than me. And each agent was barely 30 years old – if that. So I was like, you know, based on this, if this is reality, I should have retired 15 years ago.
AP: Do you ever, when you’re coming to the end of a scene, stop because you know they’re going to fade to black and white?
Cole: No. We joke about them, they call them, what do they say? They call it the poof movement or poof moment. “Oh, it’s definitely going to be a poof. You’re going to get a poof.” Poof.
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You know, someone’s gonna choose it. And it certainly won’t be me or anyone else in the cast who will be in charge of figuring out where your poof movement is. So it would be better to leave it to higher minds.
AP: It’s fantastic, I don’t know how to describe them.
Cole: This may be the legend, I’m told there’s a sound associated with it, isn’t it? That is, when does it freeze? I’ve been told, I don’t know if I believe it, but it’s actually the voice of Don Bellisario, the original creator, echoing into a microphone where he went, “Poof.” Now, you can believe your word – now let the internet go crazy.
I was told this, and I have no reason not to believe it, you know, because I call (co-star) Shawn Murray the historian of the show, because he’s been there for 23 years, and I think he’s the one who told me this. I always forget who said what to me, but you know, I’ll blame it on him.