“This thing was going to explode next to my face.” NCIS villain Scott Wolf during the filming of a violent scene failed to get into character
Scott Wolf encountered an unexpected problem while shooting a violent scene for which he was not prepared.
In NCIS, Scott Wolf played the role of villainous special ops operative Jonathan Cole. The role in the TV series was small, but it had quite an impact on the actor himself, who discovered his own weaknesses and understood what he still needs to work on.
As a special ops operative Wolf had to play a man familiar with guns, who not only carried them with him more than once, but also used them. And he also had to use it in the TV series in one of the scenes when Jonathan Cole shoots two people. During an interview with TV Insider, Wolf talked about how the filming of the scene in which he had to handle the gun for the first time went.
I’m an ex-Navy Seal. I’ve shot thousands and thousands of rounds, and so I need to shoot two people, and they shot it in super slow motion, and as I was coming out from behind the wall, they shot it, and the gun went off, and it was a lot.
[After watching the footage of the scene Scott thought] Oh, this actually looks really cool. I look like sort of Navy Seal-ish. I might’ve been voted least likely to be a Navy Seal in high school.
However, the actor admitted that on the footage after the gun was fired, he reacted “because it was extremely loud, and I hadn't fired the gun before.” As a result, he expected that the director would want to reshoot the scene.
I was like, yeah, I figured that we might be having this conversation. So the shot that’s in the show, I had a chance to kind of compose myself to know that this thing was going to explode next to my face and not look like someone who had never fired a gun before.
After being better prepared for the scene, Scott Wolf did not step out of character during the gunshot and came off credibly in NCIS as a special ops operative. However, in the first version of the scene he failed to hide the surprise caused by the gunshot, for which he was not prepared, so there was a need to reshoot the scene.