There are very few people I would get up at 4.30 on a cold wintry morning for (in case you’re new to my articles, I live in Sydney, Australia).  Willie Garson is one such person.  I had the opportunity to join in a press call with Willie on Monday who is one of the stars of the USA Network hit WHITE COLLAR.  And yes, I am taking the liberty to call him “Willie” rather than “Mr. Garson” because, as of right now, I feel like we are old pals, and I say this because when I introduced myself on the call, his response was “aaaaahhhh, is this ‘valshopaholic’?” (for the uninitiated, that is my Twitter handle).

The challenge with participating in a conference call is that, if you are farther down the line for your turn to ask a question, someone else may have already asked the question you had prepared.  And so, in my usual nutty fashion, I tried to think of the most “out there” questions – without scaring him, of course!

So here goes…

Valerie Leung: It is election time in the US.  I know Mozzie is very anti-establishment and anti- government but he votes.  So if Mozzie was to run for President, what would his election platform be and would Neal be his campaign manager?

Willie Garson:  I don’t know if Neal would be his campaign manager but Mozzie’s election platform would be to dismantle the entire government.  That would be his platform and that would be chaos.  I don’t know if Neal would really get behind that.  He would be a friendly voice to Mozzie but I don’t know if he’d be a full supporter.

VL:  We know you’re good friends with Elvis Costello.  Any chance you can get him to guest star on WHITE COLLAR or your webseries WHOLE DAY DOWN?

WG: Um…how do I answer this…

VL: Does he want to?

WG: I’m not allowed to answer that.  Take whatever meaning I’m hinting at as you wish but I’m not allowed to answer that specific question about that specific person.

VL: OK so we should be on the lookout for him, just in case?

WG: That’s all I’m going to say.

VL: OK (I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest Costello may be guest-starring in episode 13, with a jazz theme, to be directed by Tim DeKay).  A couple of weeks ago, Jeff tweeted a heavily redacted photo of you pranking Matt on set for Magic Mike the day it came out.  He said he has a video clip of it but he wasn’t going to publish it until he’s got permission from you.  So can you please give permission to Jeff now so we can all watch it?

WG: (hesitates) I will…not…I will think about it.  There are certain areas of me that should not appear on the internet…

VL: I’m sure the editing department would be very good at blurring out bits that might not be suitable for children?

WG: Believe me they’re not suitable for adults either!

Other highlights from the call:

• Willie’s drink of choice for the season 4 premiere is a Sidecar…or few
• He is proud of the show for not being mind-numbing which adults can watch with their kids
• If WHITE COLLAR is renewed for a fifth season (it had better be!), he intends to direct an episode
• There’s no love interest for Mozzie so far this season (which doesn’t mean there won’t be) but Willie thinks Mozzie in a relationship is great
• The most intriguing bromance on the show is between Mozzie and Peter.  However, Willie says there are some great Mozzie-Jones moments in the episode being shot right now (ep412)
• When asked who would win if the entire WHITE COLLAR cast of characters was on SURVIVOR, Willie thinks Mozzie would, just because he would be stealthily doing something in the background that nobody knows about, and that Peter would probably be the first to be voted out
• According to Willie, Matt Bomer thinks twitter is the beginning of hell in a hand basket.  Whenever he wants to annoy him, Willie reads out some of the craziest tweets he gets
• What does Mozzie do in his spare time?  Probably hustling and spending a lot of time in the library reading.

WHITE COLLAR season 4 premieres with “Wanted” on the USA Network, July 10 at 9/8c.

This interview was first published at LenaLamoray.com