Criminal Minds' Shemar Moore Breaks Down Agent Morgan

When you think of someone on Criminal Minds kicking down doors, reenacting crime scenes, and of course being super manly and hot, Shemar Moore, who plays Agent Morgan, immediately comes to mind.

Other than the fact that Moore and Morgan are both quite attractive men, Moore said, "Morgan is the biggest stretch of a character from my personality that I've portrayed."

Moore explained, "Morgan and Shemar Moore are contrasting. I'm not a big fan of guns and I had never shot a gun aside from some BB guns... As for the busting down the door, kicking down the door; Morgan's much more of a hot head than I am in real life."

However, that doesn't mean that Moore dislikes playing a character opposite of his personality. "I like being the tough guy. I use it. Morgan's the one who wants to go in the burning building first and come out last. He's the one who wants to protect by any means necessary. He doesn't think he's invisible. If anybody, he's got a little bit of a swagger, a little cocky confidence. He's very seasoned, he's had experience and he trusts his instincts and his reflexes."

Prior to the Agent Morgan centered episode, Profiler, Profiled, in which Agent Morgan himself had to be profiled by the BAU team, and it was revealed that he had been molested as a child, Moore was unsure of the reasoning for Morgan's tough guy exterior.

"Until that episode [Profiler, Profiled], I was making up my back-story. I was trying to create a life for Morgan, but I didn't really have anything to sink my teeth into... It was golden. It gave me a world of stuff to play for him."

He continued, "I was very grateful for Profiler, Profiled because yes, it was a chance for me to get a lot of camera time and a lot of dialogue, which is great for me as an actor. Also, though, it was a contradicting, surprising story. He has a tough guy façade. You think there's no chink in his armor. Then you find out the opposite. Something close to him derailed him. It's his weak spot. It's his kryptonite. For me, it really helped me understand who this guy was, where I could take him emotionally."

For example, he said, "I know why I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm not just doing it so I can stop the bad guy. I know it's important for me to fill a void in my life by doing something now as adult to do something in a way I couldn't do to save myself."

Since Moore did not know about his back-story until he was handed the script for the episode, the molestation aspect was definitely a revelation to him. "Ed Bernero [executive producer of Criminal Minds, and writer of that episode] was surprised that I didn't react. He told me this after the fact, that what he was most impressed about was that I never once complained. I never balked at the fact that Morgan has been molested."

While the storyline was a surprise, Moore didn't argue it. "Morgan was fighting his own demons to release himself. For that I would never complain. I think if I did object to being molested, that's just Shemar Moore being self-indulgent. That would be me taking it too personally. We're actors. It's pretend. It's fake. It's not about you. That story was bigger than me. Bigger than Shemar. Bigger than Morgan."

"For me it was about men out there that have to be tough. It was our way of giving men permission to admit that they're broken, or at least cracked," Moore elaborated.

"We all have something that is our Achilles' heel. So when Ed came to me and showed me the script, I was just excited. I like playing broken characters. I don't want to play a perfect guy. We don't watch people because they're squeaky clean. We watch them because we want to see their trials and tribulations," he added.

So will we get more of Morgan's back-story any time soon? Probably not, he said. "This show is not Grey's Anatomy. It's not a soap opera... I probably won't get a chance to emote like that again, not to that degree. That was a huge secret I had to divulge. I had to let it out."

Yet, Moore clarified, "Will I still get to emote and have a point of view and still be affected by the world we're in? Yeah. Now because of that show, every reaction Morgan has is more potent, is more meaningful. People know why this guy is built the way he is, why he does what he does."

In an ensemble cast show like Criminal Minds, the show has done a great job at letting the audience get to know the characters, even if it is through bits and pieces sprinkled in throughout the episodes. "Our show is a procedural and there's a formula to it and the formula works and you can't break the formula... It's tough in that to really understand the back-story of characters, to get into the back-story of the seven of us..."

As tough as it may be, the writers are doing it, and Moore seems to agree: "I think the writers and producers are doing a good job about targeting each one of us, like Reid with the sick mother back-story; Hotch wanting to be there for his wife and kids; Gideon they haven't really gotten too deep with it, but he has a son he doesn't get along with and a girlfriend they've alluded to."

On a lighter note, there's something else about Morgan that viewers love: his flirtatious relationship with Penelope Garcia, played by the super talented Kirsten Vangsness. "Kirsten is just a hoot... She's fun to flirt with. She's feisty, and she can flirt back. She calls me on my shit, and I think that comfort that we have with each other frees us up to be as playful as we are."

Most of the Morgan/Garcia flirt fest is done over the phone, and the conversations almost always begin with a fun greeting. "We're competing to see who can come up with more pet names than the other. She's got me beat. I usually come up with baby girl or sweetness."

The fun on the set doesn't end with Moore and Vangsness. The whole cast and crew has a great time. "We're a bunch of goofballs. Mandy's a hoot. He's singing and telling jokes and trying to talk Ebonics to me and I'm teaching him black handshakes. Thomas is telling one liners..."

"We have a lot of fun. It's refreshing," Moore said. "We went to a TV Guide Party a couple weeks ago. We all decided to show up as a cast... Matthew's running around with his nerf gun shooting pictures, shooting people, shooting Kirsten in the boobs, shooting me. Me and AJ are dancing on the dance floor getting our soul train on, Paget's running around."

"You wouldn't see it coming... We're all so very, very different," Moore said. "But that's what we do. We click."