What To Know
- Mark Harmon will reprise his role as Leroy Jethro Gibbs in the November 11 NCIS and NCIS: Origins crossover, appearing onscreen in the prequel’s first hour.
- Harmon, who remains an executive producer and narrator for NCIS: Origins, tells TV Insider if he’s open to future appearances.
- He reflects on the process of revisiting his character’s past and finds the narrative expansion and involvement in the prequel series both interesting and rewarding.
Now that we’re going to see Mark Harmon onscreen again as Leroy Jethro Gibbs, what are the chances he reprises the role again in the future? He’s appearing in the Tuesday, November 11, NCIS and NCIS: Origins crossover, in the first hour, the prequel’s.
“I don’t know,” Harmon admits to TV Insider. “[Showrunners] Gina [Lucita Monreal] and David [J. North] had an idea. I obviously like them, I admire ’em, worked with ’em for a very long time. They’re very good. They had an idea, and I liked the idea.”
He continues, “I try really hard to think about what’s best for the show or what possibly can work for this show. But part of that also is giving them the ability to write what they feel is right for the reasons they feel it’s right. I try hard not to bother them, not to make their job harder than it is, and it’s plenty hard just developing this new show. And I’m reminded by that because it’s exactly what the mothership was when it first debuted. And this is on a similar path, which is not a bad idea if it works. So, we’ll see.”
Harmon starred as Gibbs on NCIS for 18 full seasons before exiting as a series regular in its 19th. He hasn’t been seen onscreen since on the mothership, though he remains an executive producer. He’s also an EP on Origins, where he narrates every episode as the series follows the young version of his character, played by Austin Stowell, in his early days at NIS (the agency name change is coming soon). He did appear onscreen in the Origins premiere; the prequel shows him still in Alaska as he looks back on his past.
As for how settled Gibbs is in Alaska, “I think he’s very comfortable on his own. He probably has more challenges being around lots of people than he does being alone,” Harmon tells TV Insider before pointing to Monreal and North’s tease that he’s no longer alone in the crossover.
“I’m trying to help them. It’s why the voiceover thing was something that they pitched from the beginning in the idea of this show, and it keeps me physically involved. It’s something I do, like, every 10 days, I go in and do however many loops we have or shows we have to do,” he adds. “And that narrative has been fun to try to get behind and understand things that were just during the course of the show presented weekly that you just took as being true and move forward. But now maybe you get a chance now to understand a little more or to find a little more, or even show how it was developed because you’re a number of years advanced to what we’ve already shown audiences. And that’s been an interesting process for me from the beginning, sitting in that room and watching actors come through the door to play people that you knew later in their lives. So it’s all been new and that’s pretty interesting on a show that’s 20 years old.”
Do you want to see Mark Harmon onscreen again after the crossover? How? Let us know in the comments section below.
NCIS & NCIS: Origins Crossover, Tuesday, November 11, 8/7c, CBS