David's New Home
JAG vet David James Elliott commands Close attention
By John Sellers, TV Guide, December, 11, 2006


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When you're hanging out with David James Elliott, the actor best know as the military stud on JAG, you're bound to see someone salute. Still, it can be unsettling to witness-like when the actor strides into an elevator after a recent taping of Rachael Ray only to have the elderly operator put hand to brow and bark, "Commander!"

This fall the 46-year-old - who shed his uniform when JAG went off the air in 2005 - joined up with CBS's Friday night drama Close to Home as ambitious Indianapolis ADA James Conlon. Elliott can take at least part of the credit for a ratings boost that's made it Friday's No. 1 show. While the legal-eagle role isn't a total departure (JAG is short for Judge Advocate General), Elliott is quick to point out a major difference, aside from the wardrobe and longer hair. "Conlon is abrasive," he says over a chicken club (hold the bacon and mayo). "It's nice to be mean for a change."

Anyone - other than that elevator guy - who watches Conlon issue blunt directives to his staff might forget that Elliott portrayed squeaky-clean Navy man Harmon Rabb for nearly a decade. But in person, the mountainous 6'4" guy with a handshake befitting the Hulk is anything but caustic. Over the course of two breezy hours, the self described jokester - who has been married for 13 years to JAG costar Nanci Chambers (Lieutenant Loren Singer), with whom he has two kids, 13 and 3 - both mock-chokes his interviewer for asking a cheeky question and offers up a chestnut about a drunk uncle. The goofiness nicely offsets the chiseled charisma that elicits such gushing message-board posts as, "He's even has gorgeous feet!"

In the 1970's, it wouldn't have seemed he was heading for such adoration. "I had long hair, man," he says. "I was a freak." Elliott, who grew up in a farming communiy outside Toronto, played in various punk and New Wave bands with names like the Assassinators and left school at 17 to try to make it big in Toronto. "I was working at a belt factory and living in this boarding house. The only thing that held the band together was I threatened to punch everyone out if they left."

He discovered acting in his twenties and was cast as a dim-witted stripper in the surprisingly successful Canadian stage comedy "B-Movie: The Play." "The first entrance, I come right from the strip club." he says. "I have an overcoat on, but a guy goes, 'Let me take your coat.' I say, 'No!' but he rips the coat off anyway, and - boom! - I'm wearing a loin cloth with a Tarzan theme going on. So I had to be ripped." Elliott began maintaining a lean physique - which he now keeps up, in part, by competing in triathlons.

Unfortunately for Close to Home's largely female audience, Elliott won't be flashing those abs anytime soon. "Someone wrote a shower scene for him and the network knocked it out," says executive producer Eric Overmyer. "But we're still hoping to get his shirt off in some plausible way. It's hard. The ADA doesn't have a lot of reason to disrobe at the office."

So far, Conlon has been something of a puzzle, but the pieces will be coming together later this season. Fans may be hoping for a romance with the recently widowed Annabeth (Jennifer Finnigan), but no one should hold their breath. However, they can anticipate his ex-wife and teenage daughter, alluded to in recent episodes, entering the picture.

While JAG's all-American patriotism had a profound effect on Elliott - he became a U.S. citizen in 2002 so he could vote - it's doubtful that his new character's mean streak will surface in real life: "On TV you can get away with it. In my house, things start being withheld."

The text under pictures on the right: Charmed, I'm sure: Catherine Bell fell for Elliott on JAG; will Finnigan get Close, too?