'Miami Vice' star on when he was done with the show

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On how a sailfish ultimately decided if he’d go out for what would be his life-changing turn as cop Sonny Crockett in opposite Philip Michael Thomas’s Rico Tubbs in Miami Vice (1984-1989):

“I was fishing with my good friend Dickey Bets from the Allman Brothers Band. We were sailfishing off [the coast of] Stuart, Florida. I had just finished making an independent movie in Miami [1985’s Ceasefire] and I got a call shipped to shore from my agent. By the way, I'd met with the folks from Universal and I'd made a few pilots for NBC that were unsuccessful… My agent said, ‘They want you to come in and audition for this. And I said, ‘I'm not doing that. I'm fishing, I'm not gonna stop fishing, get on a plane, fly back to L.A. and go in and entertain [NBC executive] Brandon Tartikoff, just not gonna do it.’ He said, ‘Don, if you do this, you're probably gonna get this part.’ And I said, ‘I've auditioned for these people. They've got tons of film on me. Tell 'em to make a decision.’ And he said, ‘There's a ticket at the airport, I advise you to get on the plane and come back.’ So I went out and on the back of the deck, I had a fish on the line at the time. And the fish was tail walking and spitting and trying to throw the hook and everything. And I said, ‘Well, if I boat this fish, maybe I'll go.’ And I boated the fish, and it was a really nice sailfish. So I got on a plane that night and went to L.A. and met the next day with Brandon Tartikoff.”

On how they landed on Sonny’s iconic fashion sense:

“That was all a function of Jodi Tillen, the costume designer. She went to Italy, bought up a bunch of stuff and pulled it off the models’ backs and then brought it to us… Sonny Crockett was based on my personal experiences with seeing these kinds of dudes around, the drug dealers with big watches and fancy cars, and so on and so forth. Excuse me. And the function of the heat. It was just so ****ing hot that I put a T-shirt on, no belt, no socks, the lightest weight shoes I could find. And I've pushed the sleeves up on the jacket because it was so hot. So the look [was basically] form following function.”

On the excitement and perils of massive television fame at the time, and why he left Miami Vice after five seasons:

“No one can be prepared for that. It was exhilarating. It was exciting. I mean, I think for all actors, part of the reason we get into the business in the first place is for adulation and to fill a void that we can only fill by creating these characters and telling these stories and having people appreciate them. So that kind of success is super intoxicating. And it can also be a career killer, that kind of white hot fame in an identifiable character… That kind of fame is debilitating sometimes. When we got to the end of the fifth season, obviously Universal wanted me to make more episodes. They basically said, ‘You can do it anyway you want. You can do two-hour movies if you want. You can do all this.’ And I just said, ‘You know what? This is done. This character's been done. We've told every possible story that you can imagine. I have fatigue [from] playing the character. And I imagine that we're messing with fire if we continue to throw this out there. It would've still sold soap. But I'm not so sure that there would've been much for me beyond that.”