AJ Buckley on Fear of Being Categorized and His Changing Appearance on ‘SEAL Team’
“I was on CSI for nine years and I played a geeky lab guy… I was really worried that I was going to be typecast as a geek, or a lab guy” – AJ Buckley Viewers who watched actor AJ Buckley go from playing crime lab technician Adam Ross on CSI: NY to playing Navy SEAL Sonny Quinn on SEAL Team a few years later were probably surprised by the actor’s change in appearance. Buckley lost over two dozen pounds between the two series and gained more muscle.
Speaking about landing the role on SEAL Team with Parade, Buckley revealed how he transformed his appearance to surprise many during the audition process and how fulfilling it was for him: Ezoic “I was on CSI for nine years and played a geeky lab guy, and then, at the same time, I was on Supernatural and played paranormal investigator Ed Zeddmore, and both of these guys are super geeky. Me, I’m a nerd and a goofball at heart, but I always, always wanted to do action movies and those kinds of characters. […] “So when I finished the show, I was really worried that I was going to be pigeonholed as a nerd, or a lab guy, so I turned it into a full-time job. I did this series in Canada right before doing SEAL Team, and the character at the beginning of the show had to be overweight. He was an alcoholic cop. And by the end of the show program, he found his way. They said, ‘See if you can get a little fat, and eventually, lose weight.’ “I did it myself. It was the first time I had been away from my daughter for a long time. So I turned it into, like, a five-month boot camp. I had an amazing trainer in Canada, and I literally trained harder than I ever had. I gained 15, 16 pounds to get up there, and I was just horrible.
“I was about 22 or 23 percent body fat at the beginning, and by the end of five months, I was down to 11½ percent. I lost 26 pounds and was in the best shape of my life. Then when I got back to L.A., literally about a month and a half, I got called. I had been working with Ben Cavell on Justified, and he said, ‘Hey, I’m about to do a pilot, and there’s a great role for you,’ and I did it.
“When I walked into the room, they were like, ‘Wow!’ I was really lucky to be with CBS for 17 years. Most of my acting career has been with CBS. So it was great to meet producers that I’ve known since the beginning of CSI because they were like, ‘Oh my gosh—! You’re a completely different person.'” “There were times when my agent and manager would send me in for an audition, and the casting director would say, ‘No, we know that guy. He’s not right.’ And they’d say, ‘Trust me, let him in the room just to see what he’s like. He’s a completely different person.’ And every time I went in, they’d say, ‘Oh my gosh. Did you eat your last person?’ There was probably a 35-pound difference between Adam Ross on CSI and Sonny Quinn.”
