Katrina Law is one proud mama after getting to share the NCIS screen with real-life daughter Kinley — but there were a few challenges behind the scenes.
“I definitely had my stage mom moments,” Law, who plays Jessica Knight on the CBS series, exclusively told Us ahead of Kinley’s Tuesday, November 10, appearance, admitting that when they yelled cut and “all of a sudden” her daughter was “acting like a normal 7 year old,” she found herself saying, “No, you can’t scream!”
The actress, 41, recalled thinking, “‘Oh God, like, don’t think my child is crazy.’ Forgetting that she’s already been on set and everybody knows her.” (Law shares Kinley with estranged husband Keith Andreen, whom she filed for divorce from in 2025 after 12 years of marriage.)
Law revealed, “I definitely had those moments of like, ‘OK, I want everybody to think that she’s good.’ And then moments where I’m just watching her act and tearing up and crying because I’m so insanely proud of her.”
She confessed it was “between the worry and then the proud moments” that she was “definitely the stage mom.”
Law also had her own challenges during her daughter’s cameo, since she had to keep doing her own job as a special agent trying to find out where a little girl’s (Kinley) mother had disappeared amid a murder case.
“When we were shooting, it was a precarious balance between being an actor, being a mom, and then being an acting coach for my daughter,” Law told Us, thanking director Marc Roskin for allowing her to ebb and flow in shared scenes with Kinley.
She explained, “It was good to be able to be in the scene with her, and when she would look at [the team] and just kind of be like, ‘Hey, back here,’ without having to cut and without having 20 different voices in her ear.”
Law was grateful she was able to “streamline” her daughter’s directions on set, saying overall it was “a lot of fun.”
During Tuesday’s episode of NCIS, Kinley makes her acting debut as an 8-year-old girl named Chloe who is found hiding alone in her apartment when her Marine mother goes missing.
Once Chloe is taken into custody at NCIS — after being found by Knight under a sink — the team learns that she has a surprising skill “that just might crack the case wide open,” according to the official logline.
“As the investigation unfolds, it’s a race against time that tests just how far a parent will go to protect family,” per CBS.
For Law, it was the perfect time for Kinley to join their NCIS family in an official capacity as she speaks fluent Mandarin — a skill that could come in handy on the case — and has been pushing to act with her mother for years.
“I’ve been bringing her to set for the past four years, and then one day she walks up to our writer, who was the writer of this episode, Scott Williams, he did a gorgeous job on this episode, and she says to him, ‘I want to be on the show,’” Law recalled of how the collaboration came about. “He’s like, ‘Oh, OK.’ [She said], ‘I want to help my mommy solve the case.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, great.’ And she goes, ‘And I speak Mandarin,’ and he went, ‘Oh.’”
A year and a half later, Williams asked Law if Kinley was serious and once she auditioned it was clear she was meant to be in front of the camera.
“She knocked the audition out of the park. She memorized six pages of sides in less than 20 minutes,” Law gushed. “That’s how she got her part. Basically, she pitched her own story line.”
NCIS airs on CBS Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
