J.K. Simmons said the network talked about putting a hairpiece on Will Pope

If you're watching a show titled The Closer, the last thing you'd expect is for the series to focus on a past affair between two prominent characters. While the crime drama mentioned Brenda Leigh Johnson and Will Pope's past relationship from time to time, it wasn't as important as the cases or her current relationship with Fritz Howard (Jon Tenney).

J.K. Simmons, who played Pope, said it was hard pitching him and his character because he was a bald guy. There was a solution to that problem, but he instantly refused it.

During an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Simmons said, "I was kind of a hard pitch to the studio and the network, who were thinking, as most people would, 'So there’s this romantic past, but he’s a bald 50-year-old white guy... he can’t have a romantic anything.' And they talked about putting a hairpiece on me, and I just said, 'You know what? No. No.’ For a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I don’t want to show up to work an extra half an hour early every day to have a hairpiece put on.”

So how did they make Will Pope a heartthrob? They changed his wardrobe. "We thought, 'What can we do to make this guy a bit of a Lothario?’ If he’s concerned about his appearance — ‘cause we do dye what’s left of my hair — then the other obvious thing is make him a real clotheshorse, a very natty guy who obviously spends some time looking in the mirror in the morning and getting his tie just right. It also made him a little bit old school, which is something that appealed to me, even though it wasn’t necessarily there in the writing. Because Brenda’s character is such an eccentric, I wanted to be a little more conservative, but without the ‘By the book, dammit, you maverick!’ stereotype. I loosened my tie literally for the first time in an episode that’s going to air in the next few weeks."