There are several long-term players on NCIS you've seen but probably never noticed.
They pop up occasionally in a scene, driving a car, maybe, or standing in the background. If you're an avid NCIS fan, you've watched an episode where they've been onscreen; maybe you've even heard their voice. But a stand-in's job is mostly to stand, to let light bounce off them, and to move as the actor will move, allowing the camera crew and the director to envision how a scene will look.
The work of a stand-in is peculiar.
They look like their actors in broad strokes — similar height, similar hair color, similar skin tone — but they don't wear the wardrobe, usually dressing in darkish colors so as not to throw off the lighting. They don't really wear makeup, either, unless there are extenuating circumstances, like a sunburn.
Most of them get jobs through a connection to someone on the crew. Chris Liner, who does stand-in work as well as a number of crew jobs, told BuzzFeed News getting a good background gig has a lot to do with "being at the right time, at the right moment, and having some kind of relationship."
"I honestly fell into this business," said Mike Archer, who worked as a stand-in on JAG — of which NCIS is a spin-off — for four years and has been Michael Weatherly's stand-in since Season 1. And among these five long-term stand-ins, that seems to be a universal sentiment.
"I was a game-show model," said Susan Michaels, Pauley Perrette's stand-in since 2003. She told BuzzFeed News she got into background work after her brother-in-law rode in an elevator with someone who worked at Central Casting, the background actor clearinghouse. Her first background job was on Fantasy Island, where she played one of the "lava girls."
"I started a few months into Season 2," said Paul Conkling, Sean Murray's stand-in. "What's interesting is I thought I was just coming out for one day."
Conkling has an MBA and used to work as an auditor, he said. "It's cool to be part of something that's making people happy," which was not his experience of "the corporate world." "Doing auditing, you're not really making anyone happy."
Arthur Murray, Rocky Carroll's stand-in, also entered the background game sideways, he confirmed in a phone interview. "I decided to come out to try to make it on the big screen, and then I got caught up doing background," said Murray, who also plays a non-speaking agent in the squad room when he's not standing in for Carroll. This is Murray's seventh season with NCIS.
Liner is a "utility stand-in," which means he doesn't have a designated actor he works with, but stands in as needed — sometimes for someone playing a corpse. "They say I'm the best stand-in for a dead body in town," he said wryly. As a corpse stand-in, Liner will rehearse the scene with the main actors while "whoever's dead" is still preparing for the scene. "So I'll lay in the soot or be on the gurney or be in the damaged car, and the actors will poke and prod and explain with $5 words what happened and how long I've been dead."
Liner also works as a video unit coordinator for NCIS and a non-union grip when the show's allowed to use them. (He's trying to accrue enough days to join the union.)
The stand-ins of "second team" (the main actors are on "first team") are hourly employees of the show. Second team is often irregular work, but these five particular stand-ins are union members who pretty much work full time. Stand-ins designated to a specific actor generally work whenever their actors are working.
After becoming a member of the actors' union, SAG-AFTRA, it's easier (but not easy) for a stand-in or background actor to make a living. They're guaranteed pay for eight hours every day worked, they get paid time-and-a-half for the first four hours over that, and if they're working for longer than that, they receive double the hourly wage. There is additional pay if the scene requires the actor to get wet, to get a haircut or wear a wig, to drive a car, or a do read-through of their actor's lines while blocking the scene (which they do on NCIS). When someone calls one of the characters on the phone, that actor's stand-in will usually read the lines spoken on the phone while they're shooting; this gets them a pay bump too.
These stand-ins are also more involved with the actors than is customary. They've been working together for so long that they've fallen into a comfortable rhythm. Conkling, Michaels, and Archer highlight the sides for their actors, which is unusual, and run lines with them. During her interview, Michaels was holding pages she'd prepared for Perrette, the actor's lines in larger print. "We all started this show wearing sunglasses, and now we're all wearing reading glasses," she said.
Though unprompted, Sean Murray described Conkling as "one of the nicest, most professional stand-ins you'll ever meet." As he was off set being interviewed for this story, Conkling noted that Murray was covering for him: "Sean's over there standing in for me."