'NCIS' Billy Dee Williams: 'Mark Harmon has a beautiful spirit'

Veteran actor Billy Dee Williams takes a break from playing with his one-year-old granddaughter -- "She's adorable," he says -- to talk about something else that he enjoyed ... working with the cast of CBS' "NCIS."

"I've been in this business," he tells Zap2it, "I guess, about 50 years, and I've worked with a lot of people. Generally, I get along great with people. But I must say, this is one of the highlights. I really mean that. Working with these people was certainly a highlight of my life in this business."

Williams guest-stars in "Namesake," the episode airing tonight (Tuesday, Oct. 30), playing Leroy Jethro Moore. The World War II veteran is a friend of Gibbs' father, Jackson (Ralph Waite, who also appears), who named his son after his pal.

When a Naval petty officer is gunned down in a billionaire's Ferrari, the investigation by NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and his team leads back to the first Leroy Jethro.

"My character's a guy who was in the Marines in the Second World War," Williams says, "and received a Congressional Medal of Honor, the kind of Medal of Honor they gave to the Tuskegee Airmen."

Born in 1937, Williams is still a little young to be playing a World War II vet, since the conflict started when he was two years old.

"I play an 80-year-old man," says the handsome actor. "In my family, we don't get gray, so they had to put a lot of gray into my hair. I don't necessarily look my age, but it was fun to explore the whole aging process and the way an energetic 80-year-old man would approach situations. So, that was a lot of fun to do."

Asked if Leroy Jethro Moore might reappear, Williams says, "That's the whole idea, that he's recurring character. I think they were happy about the way things turn out, so I would suspect I'd be back on there. I'm looking forward to it. It was three-digit-heat [in Santa Clarita, Calif.], but it was fun."

He especially enjoyed working with Harmon.

"Mark Harmon has a beautiful spirit," he says. "I even had to say it to him one day, 'You are really a beautiful spirit. You have a good heart.' He's very gracious about things like that. He's not given to hubris or arrogance.

"He's not ostentatious. He leads a very simple kind of existence. he's a person to be admired."

Williams also had a good time with Michael Weatherly, who plays NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo.

"When we had a table read," says Williams, "he was quite a character. He's a standup comedian. He just never stops; people expect it from him. He's a very nice man. He just had a baby, as a matter of fact. He was quite happy about this situation."

Having done the bulk of his scenes with Harmon and/or Waite, Williams might break one of his own rules to check out the results.

"Mark and I have a couple of nice scenes together," he says. "Actually, I'm interested to see how it all works out. I never watch myself, but I think I'd like to see, in this situation, how that whole exchange turned out. I think it worked very well."