NCIS star Michael Weatherly has detailed a prank he played on co-star Sean Murray during their time together on the show.
The pair, who played Tony DiNozzo and Tim McGee, respectively, appeared on the show together for 13 years before Weatherly’s departure in 2016, which came at the end of the 13th season.
Following his guest role in the 21st season earlier this year, Weatherly sat down with the Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch podcast to discuss his time on the show, detailing a pair of pranks that he and Murray used to play on each other.
“So ,Clif Bars are these granola, oatmeal-y kind of things, and if you get them warm you can really shape them into anything you want – very poo-like,” he began. “So I would go up and take two of them and flatten them out – then I’d pop them into Sean Murray’s toilet in his trailer.
“Then I’d go out and Sean would come running from the car, like, ‘I got to go to the bathroom!’ And yet I knew that he was going to open his trailer and take a pee and pee on these two Cliff bars in the toilet.
“And then I would wait outside, and I would hear ‘Oh!” And then that meant that somebody went into your trailer and dropped a deuce. So Sean is coming out, and I would just walk by,” he recalled with laughter.
Naturally, Murray wanted some sweet vengeance, with Weatherly recalling: “Then like a week later, I would go to my trailer, and I’d open the thing. I’d sit down, and I’d go [sniffs], and I’d be like, ‘What is that smell?’ And then I’d pull my pants up a little and look in the toilet, and there was like a mess, like a hot mess.
“And I was like, ‘What? Somebody had diarrhoea just in my trailer! Like left it didn’t even flush it!’ So I went outside, and I started calling for an AD. I’m like, ‘Somebody’s…’ And then I went back in, and I looked around, and somebody had taken a boiled egg yolk and that sulphur smell, which had filled the hole.”
“And then I looked around, like, that’s chili and that’s a little Cliff bar, and somebody had made a mess. And then I left my trailer, and I walked into the squad room, and Sean was like, ‘How you doing, bud?’ And I was like, ‘How you doing, bud?’ And he’s like, ‘Good, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning [looking over papers].’”
Though Weatherly’s return on the main NCIS show was only temporary, the star will front a spinoff, NCIS: Tony & Ziva, alongside Cote de Pablo. Filming is set to begin soon, with a premiere locked in for 2025.
NCIS airs on CBS in the US. Seasons 1-20 are streaming on Disney+ in the UK.