Anthony “Tony” DiNozzo Jr. is back — and better than ever.
Speaking exclusively to PEOPLE at a fan screening event for the new NCIS spinoff, NCIS: Tony & Ziva, on Wednesday, Sept. 3, Michael Weatherly, who has played Tony since NCIS debuted in 2003, shares that he went “on a diet” to prepare for the new series.
“I wanted DiNozzo to be sort of a little bit more foxy,” he adds of his special agent character.
Weatherly, 57, also shares his hack to fitting exercise into his daily routine, saying, “I learned that if you can walk, walk. If it’s like you got an hour or something to get like a mile away, walk it. You’re gonna be fine.”
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Weatherly admits that this can be tricky when dealing with young ones.
“You can do that when I was living alone,” he says. “It’s much harder when you have to navigate, like, where’s your book bag? Did you feed the dog yet?”
Weatherly is dad to three children: his adult son August, whom he welcomed with ex-wife Amelia Heinle in 1997; and his two youngest, daughter Olivia, born in 2012, and son Liam, born in 2013, with wife Bojana Janković.
He previously told PEOPLE that he was excited to spend more time with his kids following his NCIS exit in 2016.
Nearly a decade later, Weatherly calls his time with his kids “the best thing in my life” and that they “are terrific” and he’s “very proud of them.”
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Weatherly also teases for what “surprises” fans can expect from the new NCIS spinoff.
Instead of relying on huge stunt castings to drum up attention, he hints that there are many “Easter eggs” for diehard fans to enjoy on NCIS: Tony & Ziva, which sees him reuniting with Cote de Pablo’s Ziva David.
“The Easter eggs inside the show are for the fans who pay particular attention to certain conversations that have happened in the past or behaviors or even references to scenes where we do certain scenes like we did other scenes,” he shares.
“So there’s stuff like that,” he continues of how the show utilizes nostalgia. “And then names are dropped and stuff like that.”
