David James Elliott: Goodbye JAG, Hello Gooby!

It’s been nearly five years since actor David James Elliott last donned a uniform as Commander Harmon Rabb Jr., a Judge Advocate General officer who investigates and litigates crimes committed by the military, in the hit TV series JAG. Of his subsequent roles following more than a decade in the wildly popular TV series, the one that’s probably the furthest away from his former show's military and legal entanglements--and those with JAG co-star Catherine Bell--is the just-released Gooby, a family-friendly flick just released by Monterey.

“It was nice to have an opportunity to do something like this—for the family,” Elliott told me in a phone interview last week. “It was great to work with [writer/director/producer] Wilson Coneybeare—he sent me the script, I

Gooby concerns a daddy (Elliott) and a mommy (Ingrid Kavelaars) and their imaginative 11-year-old son Willy (Matthew Knight) and what happens to them when they move into their new house. Well, it’s mostly what goes on with Willy, whose fear of his family’s new home—he thinks it’s filled with evil alien invaders—prompts him to summon up someone to save him. And that someone comes in the form of a big, scruffy bear-like, Scottish-accented creature named Gooby (voiced by Robby Coltrane). It’s a nice little movie, fun, and its message about the importance of family works.

Of  this latest project, Elliott was happy to get involved with a movie that was not only unlike JAG, but was a departure from the daily grind of starring in a popular TV show.

“Yeah, JAG tied me up pretty intensely for 10 years. I was number one on the call sheet all the time, every day,” he said. “I was always up before the family and then home after they went to bed. To be free of that for a time is a great thing.”

That Elliot is the father of two children—a 16-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son—didn’t hurt either, particularly when it came to working with Knight, the 14-year-old actor who portrayed his onscreen boy.

“Oh yeah, it’s great to work with kids…and I do it a lot at home, too,” he laughed. “I love kids—they’re unhampered by all the bullshit that we have to deal with.”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on August 24, 2009 | Comments (0)