CBSBefore Michael Weatherly's final episode of NCIS aired, he hopped on the phone to speak to reporters about his last days on the long-running series and what it was like to film his final scenes as Tony DiNozzo (as a series regular, at least).
"The last scene that I shot was the last scene of the episode, and it was incredibly exciting. It was in the squad room," he revealed. "I spent the last couple of weeks walking around and trying to say hello and thank you to as many people [as possible]. You know, there's a lot of people you don't even meet. There's the swing shift that works building sets overnight. There's the off-hours security people. There's a lot of people you don't really run into. One of our great directors, Dennis Smith, told me that that would be a good thing to do and on Dennis' advice I really took that seriously."
He continued, "And so when I got to the very end of the end, when I got to my last scene in my last episode and it was the last scene on the schedule, I was not sad. I was very much filled with gratitude and I was deeply humbled by the experience that I'd been able to have.
"I mean, who gets to go on this ride? When we started this show 13 years ago, if you looked at the Upfront schedule from 2003, I don't think anyone thought Navy NCIS or whatever it was called on that schedule was the one that everyone was going be a winner."
He reflected further, "You know, I don't think anyone thought that, so for that underdog to become the dog is an experience that I've never taken lightly, I've never been dismissive of and I in fact I still think we're kind of an underdog in that I don't think people have any idea how incredible it is that we're doing the numbers that we're doing and have the fanbase and the appreciation all around the world."