Mark Harmon is shedding a little light on going from being the lead on NCIS to working more behind the scenes on NCIS: Origins — and the Gibbs of it all.
In Us Weekly’s exclusive sneak peek at the Tuesday, May 5, episode of the “NCIS: Partners & Probies” podcast, Harmon, 74, details what it’s like “exploring a character to with someone else portraying it” after passing the torch of Leroy Jethro Gibbs to Austin Stowell on NCIS: Origins.
“I wait to be asked. I’m not going to dive in there and say anything unless you ask me,” Harmon says, referring to how he has stepped back and let the newcomers take the reins after originating the Gibbs character on NCIS in 2003.
Harmon, who is an executive producer on Origins, notes, “You’d be surprised by how many people don’t ask.”
He adds that it’s “OK” if the new cast doesn’t necessarily lean on him as a performance guide, even though he played Gibbs for 19 seasons before his 2022 exit.
“It’s a different way of doing it. Not the way I did it, but that doesn’t make it right,” Harmon says, revealing that the Origins cast is well-versed in the lore of the NCIS franchise.
“Part of this is being surrounded by talented people and allowing them to do their job individually and trusting that,” he shares while talking with podcast hosts and his former castmates Brian Dietzen and Diona Reasonover. “If you’re asked, you help. Or try to. Whether you’re asked or not is not really the issue.”
Harmon points out, “This is a different show. Very different, certainly, than the mothership. Different group of actors. All of whom have done their homework. All of whom have studied the original and seen so many episodes they can’t see straight.”
While Origins, which premiered in 2024, is an entirely new group of actors, Harmon says the showrunner is a familiar face.
“A guy like David North was in that room in the beginning as a script runner,” Harmon explains, recalling that North worked his way up to writer on NCIS after realizing there weren’t any finished scripts during the second season.
Harmon remembers North writing a “full script” for season 2 of the flagship series in 2003, which solidified his place on the show. “For us on set that was the first full episode we’d seen since the pilot,” he adds.
From that point on, North wrote 73 total episodes for NCIS and served as an executive producer until 2024. He then went on to cocreate NCIS: Origins, which features Harmon as the narrator and grown-up Gibbs.
For more behind the scenes memories from his time on NCIS and his work with NCIS: Origins, listen to the full episode of “NCIS: Partners & Probies” on Tuesday. The episode also features guest Leon Carroll Jr. as he and Harmon speak about their third book, Ghosts of Sicily.
NCIS airs on CBS Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET. The season 2 finale of NCIS: Origins airs on Tuesday, May 5, at 9 p.m. ET.
