Bull is back tonight with all new episodes to kick off the new year, and it has a case that could be ripped from the headlines when Dr. Bull (Michael Weatherly) decides to represent CEO Ginny Bretton (Justine Lupe), whose company is accused of killing an employee with its self-driving car.
“I think it’s incredibly important that the show feel relevant to the world we live in today,” Weatherly told Parade.com about the subject matter for the E.J. episode. Then he jokes, “That’s not to say that five years from now it will be archaic, out of touch, and some fossil locked in amber.”
Ginny, of course, is keeping secrets from Bull, but he expects all his clients to hold back and not tell the complete truth, if not outright lies. Even knowing that, he hops into the computer-driven car with her for a spin around Manhattan, trusting his life to technology.
In real life, Weatherly has yet to do so, but he has a little bit of experience with the subject, because his wife owns a Tesla with the self-parking option.
“It doesn’t feel as strange as I thought because, of course, when you get on an airplane you know there’s a pilot but you’ve also heard of something called autopilot,” he says. “That’s a lot more terrifying than being in a car. I think our show does play on some of the fears that people have that someone can hack into a car and take it over, and, I think, those are valid fears. But it’s also a valid fear that people are texting while they’re driving or any other stupid thing that they do. We’re human, right?
Weatherly also talks about the evolution of his new role, why he feels the show is timely, moving his family to New York, and more.
When you took on the role of Dr. Bull was he fully formed or has he evolved in the months that you’ve been playing him?
Of course, there’s always an evolution that takes place over the course of episodes as the writers and everyone tries to mine the initial characterization for deeper and more meaningful story areas. I did come in with a central operating thesis or principal, which was that I used Marcello Mastroianni as one of the inspirations. I just loved the idea that this was a careening, out-of-control, demon-fueled character with a deep, unquenchable thirst for understanding about human behavior.
But on top of that lava flow of neuroses, anxiety and curiosity was this very calm haircut, glasses and suit with a sweater. My instinct was: Why would this guy want to know so much about so many different people, put them into these boxes and categories, and reduce them to stereotypes? Where would that come from? Because he can’t just have a casual curiosity about human nature or some discovered, “I’m just too good at this, so I guess I’ll do it for a living.”
I think he is fueled to try and understand his fellow human beings because there’s something about himself that is unsolvable and unknowable, and it bothers him deeply. To me that’s Dr. Bull. People might think he’s a bullshit artist, people might think he’s a con man or Svengali, or just an out and out manipulator. I think he’s all those things, but I think those are tiny things compared to what’s really going on with him.
In tonight’s episode, Bull says that he wins more than 91 percent of his cases.
By the way, I will just say I love it when he says things because who’s fact checking that dude?
Well, in this case it was the car computer. Do you always want Bull to win or might there be a time when we see him go to retrial because he lost the first time?
We’ve had a couple of cases where he’s settled or he didn’t win, or he won but it was overturned, or he lost but it was overturned and he won. There are many different meanings of that. When the computer spits out the algorithm percentage of wins, assuming that he’s going to lose the case that he’s currently involved in, I loved that moment and I think that it’s kind of a classic Bull attack because here you have science.
You have this pure science as reductive and lacking in humanity as a driverless car can be attempting to define an outcome and all the variables that go into that outcome. It’s an impossible thing to do but I’m tickled because I think that the car is doing to Bull what Bull does to people. That moment tickles me to no end.
The show overall surprises me all the time and amuses me and has gone into some strange, weird little nooks and crannies of human behavior, which, I think, is the point. It makes you think a little.
This is a ripped from the headlines kind of case. Today recently did a story on computer driven cars. Is it important that Bull be topical?
Yes. I think all the questions we’re asking now, we were asking on Dark Angel 15 years ago when I was doing that show, which were about genetics, man and machine, and technology and genome. They include: What is our responsibility to each other in using all of this technology? The really simple thing is — and I’m not single so I don’t have to worry about this, but if you want to go on a date with somebody in 2017, here’s what happens. You don’t know them, but you get their name, right? So then you go and you look at all their social media, you Google them and look at their LinkedIn or at whatever exists. You look at all the image searches you can find and you do a deep data dive on this person.
You go to sit down and have a date and you’re loaded with information about this complete stranger. And all the projections, presumptions and biases that you have, have played in already to the narrative and the conversation, rather than just sitting down with a stranger and saying, “What’s your story?” and allowing things to unfold in a human way. We now start with a bias. It’s very interesting. Our show couldn’t be more about now than CNN.
How do you feel about computer driven cars?
It’s interesting, we would rather trust a human being than a computer, even if we’re told that the computer is safer. I think there’s probably some shift when we hit the balance of the fulcrum and it flips. We rely on technology so much to do so many of our day-to-day things. We might not be open to it now, but in 15 years, we might all be looking at each other and saying, “Why did it take so long for the driverless car? It’s so obvious.” We have our little biases about freedom and our inalienable right to drive wherever we want. We somehow think that’s being taken away from us by this communist car.
Have you picked up any tips from playing Dr. Bull about assessing people that maybe you use in your real life now?
The short answer is no. One of my favorite TED talks that I’ve watched a few times is about lying: Can you tell which of these children is lying? They show kids on a screen. They leave them alone in a room with a cookie and then they ask them later if they touched the cookie, if they tried the cookie or whatever. Not even the parents of the children could tell which kid was lying. We’re really good liars.
I don’t have the hubris to think that I’ve learned a single thing. All I’ve learned is that the minute you think you know something for sure, you’re probably wrong. That keeps me paying attention rather than thinking I don’t need daily intelligence briefings because I’m a smart guy. I need the daily intelligence briefing. I need to be paying attention every day. I think we all should be paying attention every day.
Last time we spoke, we talked about you were going to wait a while to decide about how you were going to deal with the fact that Bull films in in New York and your family is in L.A. Has anything changed?
I have an extraordinary wife who has made sure that I have stayed very much in contact with my kids every day on FaceTime. I make little movies and send them to them and they come and spend a couple weeks out here. Every month or so they’ve been flying out, and I fly back and forth. So there’s been a lot of that continuity, but it still is very difficult to be away from them.
With the good luck of a second season of Bull, everyone’s moving to New York. We decided to just move to New York as a family for a few years. We’re really excited. My wife is a city girl, so she’s pretty into it. My daughter, Olivia, is very into the idea of New York City. She’s like, “Daddy, I am going to live in New York City.” My son is like, “I don’t want to live in New York City.” We may just get him a small apartment in Brooklyn.
Bull airs Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
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