NCIS fans who’ve been waiting for Michael Weatherly to get a chance to really show his stuff have been well-rewarded lately. First came a season 7 premiere that seemed almost expressly designed to show off his acting chops. Now, with a song on the NCIS soundtrack coming out this week, his singing and songwriting chops are on public view, too. (To read about and hear Weatherly's music, click here.) The ever-waggish Weatherly spoke with TV Guide Magazine about Special Agent Tony DiNozzo reverting to some of his more juvenile ways this season and why he won't be doing a crossover with the show's spinoff. For more on NCIS, check out the cover story of TV Guide Magazine, on newsstands now!

Everyone is talking about how NCIS is the No. 1 show on TV so far this season, period—no longer just the No. 1 non-reality show.
I think we’re better than the real thing. We have a very relaxed, cool thing going on here. That’s what I’m afraid of with this recent explosion in the ratings. I just don’t want anything to change. No. 3 is kind of better. They’re still not gonna cancel you if you’re No. 3. But now everyone’s looking, going “We’ve gotta get that.” It’s kind of like when they give you the ball in football. [laughs]

I had to laugh when there was an aside in a story in one of the trade papers after the third episode, where they remarked that the third week was the first episode of the season not to set record-high numbers for the show, like that was a downer.
It’s like, you only had three orgasms. It is weird. I think when we first got the ratings in, the first night, we were like, “So is all viewership up?” Because maybe all boats rise. The first week, it was like yeah, yeah, sure, football will beat us, or CSI hasn’t been on yet. Nobody really paid attention. And then the next week, it went up from the first week, and for about 10 minutes before we started shooting, we were like, “So… what’s going on?” Sean Murray was like, “I don’t know, do we like that? I’m a little uncomfortable.” And then Mark Harmon walks by: “Back to work! Let’s go!” And now we’re back to arguing about “No, I want to stand here, you don’t get to say that.” And then you forget that’s happened. But it’s sort of like, you go back to your car and you’re like, “Oh yeah, there’s a bag with a million dollars in it! I totally forgot that I had that bag with a million dollars in the front seat of my car. I must remember to put that in a safe place.”

The show has been so undervalued for so long in so many media circles that it may still be hard for some people to grasp it sitting atop the totem pole.
My friend Adam sent a funny email. He works in advertising, and they were talking about 30-second television spots, and he said to this room full of New York advertising people, “Guess what the No. 1 show in television is right now?” They were like, "CSI?” “No no no.” “There’s that Mentalist.” “No no no.” And then somebody said “NCIS: Los Angeles?” Adam was like, “No, that’s the No. 1 new show. But the No. 1 show on television is NCIS.” Crickets. The whole room is like, “Really?” It’s funny. I mean, it wasn’t as if no one had heard of it. It was just that no one knew what to say to that. It’s like if we just decided that Norman, my makeup guy, is now the secretary of defense. You’d be like, what? What’s he in charge of? “Robert Gates is gone, it’s now Norman Page, they put him in charge of the nukes.”

For some of the younger viewers discovering it, it might as well be a brand new show.
We had such a stinky stigma with the Navy NCIS and Diagnosis CSI and the JAG-Off—whatever terrible, slightly controversial Navy procedural thing was attached to us. But I think that the young people today, when they see the show at face value, free of any association, they just think, “Oh, that’s funny, I like it when he hits him in the head.” They don’t know about the Navy, and they don’t care if it’s cool or not, for some reason. And for some reason they seem to be finding CBS at 8:00 on Tuesday. That’s the craziest part of the whole thing.

Do you think the publicity for the spin-off had any effect on the original show as well?
Oh, I think the bounce off that was really good. Especially in major markets. Because we don’t get billboards and posters. I mean, I've never seen them. I've never been driving down Sunset and gone "Oh, look, a season 3 poster.” That never, ever happened. [laughs] I think you’re right. There was definitely a reminder: Oh yeah, Tuesday, Sept. 22, cool.

Next: Why you won't see Weatherly on NCIS: Los Angeles