Mitch Pileggi plays a seemingly bad guy with mommy issues on TNT’s Dallas — but what many people don’t know is, before playing Harris Ryland, the actor had a long connection with the show’s original incarnation, as early in his career, he appeared on the original Dallas, sharing screen time with Larry Hagman, Linda Gray, Patrick Duffy, and others.
“I started out on the show, actually, as an extra, back almost 30 years ago,” Pileggi revealed to us from the show’s Dallas, Texas studio. “I told that to Linda when I first came onto the show. She said ‘we’re so glad to have you on the show.’ I said ‘you know what? I used to stand behind you as an extra 30 years ago’!”
“I had lived in Austin, and I used to drive up here and do background on Dallas, and then they gave me a small part where I had a scene with Patrick and Priscilla Presley. I don’t think I had any lines. Basically, you just saw the back of my head, but it was fun,” Pileggi recalled. “And then I went out to L.A. and I did three or four episodes with Larry when he was in the nut house. It was so much fun. It was a great experience. It was early in my career, and just watching him and learning from him was tremendous. Actually, one of the first scenes that we had, they were setting up the shot and they had done his coverage and they were turning it around on me. The director was standing there talking to me, and Larry’s just standing there listening, and the director walks away, and Larry said ‘don’t worry, it’s gonna be on me.’ I have used that line so many times over the years over the years! I loved it. I thought it was brilliant. It was like ‘yes, sir, it probably won’t be.’ It turned out it wasn’t on him, it was on me!”
You can watch our video of Mitch Pileggi remembering his time on the original Dallas below:
And if you’re really curious, you can see a clip of Mitch on Dallas with Larry Hagman here.
Dallas is new again this Monday, March 3 on TNT.
Disclaimer: Travel arrangements for our Dallas press trip were provided by Warner Bros. Television.
