Are you a fan of TV reveals like NCIS, JAG and Quantum Leap? Thank tv producer Donald P. Bellisario, as he created these common collection and lots of others from the Nineteen Eighties to early 2000s. NCIS is even nonetheless going robust, because it’s about to enter its twenty third season on the 2025 TV schedule this fall. Varied actors from these reveals bought collectively this previous weekend to have fun Bellisario’s ninetieth birthday, together with Scott Bakula, who affectionately poked enjoyable on the man whereas giving a speech on the social gathering.
JAG actress Catherine Bell shared a snippet of the speech Bakula gave to the attendees on her Instagram Tales. The actor, who starred as Sam Beckett within the authentic Quantum Leap, amusingly busted Bellisario’s chops with these phrases:
We’re right here tonight, as a result of Donald Paul Bellisario is a fighter and a lover… However at the start, he’s a fighter. Once you’re born in Cokeburg, Pennsylvania, a mining city exterior of Pittsburg, in 1935, and your loved ones forces you to put on knee socks and knickerbockers day-after-day to high school, you study to combat to outlive. They could as effectively have simply pinned a ‘Kick Me’ signal in your again.
Look, having to beat that sort of adversity as a baby within the Nineteen Forties, it’s no marvel Donald Bellisario turned a profitable tv producer! Significantly although, good-natured ribbing is to be anticipated at a celebration like this. Scott Bakula (additionally of Star Trek: Enterprise fame) and Bellisario go method again, so the previous positively has the leeway to inform a narrative like that in regards to the latter, and everybody is aware of it’s coming from a pleasant place.
Together with Scott Bakula and Catherine Bell (who performed Sarah MacKenzie in all however the first of JAG’s seasons, in addition to three episodes of NCIS: Los Angeles), different notable attendees at Donald Bellisario’s birthday celebration included NCIS actors Michael Weatherly, Cote de Pablo, Sean Murray, Brian Dietzen, Gary Cole and Diona Reasonover. Bell additionally reunited with JAG costars Patrick Labyorteaux, Karri Turner and Steven Culp, with Bell particularly mentioning in her Tales that she hadn’t seen the previous two in about 20 years. I’d even be remiss if I didn’t point out that Bakula can be a part of the NCIS franchise from his time as Dwayne Pleasure on NCIS: New Orleans, although Bellisario wasn’t concerned in that spinoff’s creation.
Glad ninetieth birthday, Mr. Bellisario, and right here’s to extra celebrations in your future! If any of you studying now really feel like revisiting the unique Quantum Leap, it may be streamed without spending a dime on Roku. In any other case, get away your Paramount+ subscription to take a look at JAG and the entire NCIS reveals, which can embrace the platform-exclusive NCIS: Tony & Ziva in a number of weeks.