Interviewer: The long running military drama JAG is enjoying its best season to date. Regularly cracking the top 10 in the Nielson ratings. Here's a look. They showed a clip from Guilt (I think) when Harm is in his office with Singer and he is talking to her about her cross of Harriet.

I: Well, I am thrilled to be here with the star of JAG David James Elliott. Who by the way you just said that that was your wife.

DJE: That was my wife.

I: Hey. Does she come on the show regularly?

DJE: Yeah, she's one of the regulars.

I: Oh wow, I did not know that. Good to have you here.

DJE: Thank you, it's lovely to be here.

I: Especially under the circumstances. I mean as we all heard there's been another plane crash out of Kennedy.

DJE: (as she's talking) Oh god. (at least that's what it sounded like, not that he was hearing the news for the first time, he was just agreeing how terrible it was)

I: We don't know what's happened, but I mean how you do you feel about this.

DJE: It's like getting punched in the stomach. Oh, wow. On Veteran's Day.

I: Exactly, and almost 2 months to the....

DJE: ....almost 2 months to the day. These people are very date oriented. I don't know. It's scary, I mean.....

I: What are you gonna do? Exactly. (agreeing with DJE it's scary)

DJE: I mean, I gotta go home too.

I: You have to fly back to LA this weekend.

DJE: I do, I do. Yeah....

I: Does it kind of worry you?

DJE: It certainly concerns me. I don't know (little nervous laugh here) I don't know what I'm gonna do. I have to work on Monday so...

I: Right, right. We were talking before we started this whole interview that who knows these days what the airlines are flying, and traveling, it's out of our hands really so.....

DJE: Regardless of what they're screening, the airlines are suffering monetarily, so how does that affect keeping the aircrafts up, I mean.......

I: Exactly. It's a strange time we live in isn't it.

DJE: Boy, you just want to dig a hole. We may go back to bomb shelters, revisit the 50s, I think.

I: Yeah, well, let me ask you this. Since September 11 obviously people have become much more patriotic, much more concerned about sort of the American spirit. And your show is all about that really. How does that change the focus or your perspective of how you do the show now?

DJE: I was reading, there's an article in the Post today, an interview with my executive producer, Don Bellisario, in which he said we are not new to being patriotic and people's focus has become more of that, and certainly the show has benefited from that. Not the show was doing, this is like our third time in the top ten. So the show did very well until the Millionaire came along. Though we were the only show that really held their own against that menace. But it's gone, so oddly enough, it was gone and September 11 happened, and I think it was definitely a factor, but I don't think it was the only factor. I would hate to think our success is because of some horrific act.

I: Right, right. But in some ways people are turning, tuning in to shows that have some significance.

DJE: Yeah, right.

I: Are you going to address terrorism or anything that's happened in your show?

DJE: From what I understand, we're gonna do some.... it's tough because of the lag time from production to the air date to really be overly specific for fear that, you know, we'd be out of the loop.

I: Yeah, something else would happen.

DJE: What we've been doing is we would touch upon it generally, and then closer to the date, we'd shoot very specific scenes, and insert them a day or two, we'll shoot them like two days before the a date, airdate, and stick them in the show. But I understand there are some very specific shows coming up. I guess they're still trying to figure out exactly how to tackle that task. Cuz it was fairly sudden for everyone. I mean, look at what some of the other shows went through.

I: Exactly. Putting a show together in days like The West Wing.

DJE: A lot of these CIA shows that were all the rage in the last pilot season which suddenly have to revamp everything quickly so there's a little rearranging going on.

I: Do you think, you know we hear so much from the Hollywood community now that sort of the responsibility has shifted a little bit and the tone has shifted........

DJE: Well, there was that, the President's coalition came and talked to....

I: Right, met with some of the producers and writers from the various shows.....

DJE: Yeah, right, from the studios.

I: Do you think this is going to be a permanent shift, in like, I don’t know, maybe better quality or more wholesome programming. You know what I mean?

DJE: I think that, I mean from what I read that sounded like what they were asking. Um, yeah, I don’t think it would be a bad thing personally. I think that in a lot of ways we get carried away with freedom of speech and we forget that we do have children that are watching television. Regardless of the great argument that “Hey, I watch what my child watches.” Well, a lot of people don’t but it is your responsibility. What do we do with these children who are not being policed and who are being subjected to these, our lapse in morals, as some would call it. It’s great to have adult programming, and I’m not against it, but I think, you know…….

I: We have to be more responsible.

DJE: We have to be more responsible.

I: Tell me about how your life has changed on Hollywood sets. I mean is there more security now and are you guys taking more precautions?

DJE: There was a great deal of security where we are, you know there was a lot in the studios. Especially when that threat came down they were doing to hit a studio, security just went through the roof suddenly. Our fan mail is being screened at Paramount. I really haven’t gotten any fan mail from that date, because Paramount is taking everyone’s fan mail and I guess they are pouring through it before they release it. So it’s taking some time. We don’t shoot on the lot, we shoot just outside, just outside of LA because there’s a lot of smaller studios everywhere now with the bulk of programming going on. So we’ve upped the security there. So things are a little different, you know. The whole world’s changed. It’s a different world. When you hear your 8-year-old talking about it and the kids at school talking about Osama bin Laden, it’s a weird, these are strange times.

I: Who would’ve thought, right? But congratulations on the show.

DJE: Thank you.

I: I’m so happy to hear it’s doing so well. And safe travels.

DJE: Thank you. You too.