Jeffrey Dean Morgan gives off just the right air. It’s a mix of danger — but not the felonious kind —and sensuality.
He spends enough time without his shirt on as JD Richter in CBS’ “Extant,” airing Wednesdays, to make most women take notice. It’s surprising with Morgan’s movie star looks that acting came about accidentally.
After helping a friend move to Los Angeles, Morgan met a casting director, and “the next thing you know, I did a Roger Corman movie.”
“If you are my age or older, you started doing Corman movies,” Morgan, 49, continues. “And I did a couple of those and I did not know what I was doing. I did not know what a mark was or how to memorize lines, but I was fascinated with it. I thought, ‘Well, @#$%, this is going to be easy. I got this acting thing by the balls.’ Then it got to be 10 years later and I can’t keep a roof over my head.”
But he persisted and though he racked up many movies and TV shows, he credits Shonda Rhimes for reviving his career when he played heart transplant patient Denny Duquette on “Grey’s Anatomy.”
“I am still in contact with her and we check on each other once a month and say hi,” Morgan says. “I love her. I adore her and it would be really, really hard to say no to her” were Rhimes to ask him to be on one of her shows.
“‘Grey’s Anatomy’ gave me the opportunity to be where I am now,” he says.
And that is playing a rogue cop opposite Halle Berry.
“He’s ex-military,” Morgan says of JD. “He’s got some issues. He’s divorced, maybe he likes to drink a little bit much, but he is a solid guy and he comes in and meets Molly Woods, Halle’s character.
“I consider this to be a reboot,” he says of the new season. “I didn’t watch last season. I watched a couple of episodes to get caught up in the science of it all.”
This season is more character-driven, Morgan says, and JD’s purpose is to ask the questions the audience ponders.
“He does it with a sense of humor and a little bit of an edge,” Morgan says. “This year was to bring a little more of an edge to the show. It was a little science-y last year and I like to be the character who dirties up stuff.”
A self-proclaimed “idiot on the set,” Morgan took a break from the 14-hour day to answer our questions.