When Mark Harmon departed NCIS after 19 seasons in 2021, it felt like the final time that fans would see his legendary character Leroy Jethro Gibbs grace their television screens ever again. However, just three years later, Harmon is officially bringing the special agent back in a brand new way.
NCIS writers and executive producers David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal tell Entertainment Weekly that Harmon reached out one year ago about a project that he’d been working on with his son, Sean. The idea would go on to become NCIS: Origins, a prequel series that chronicles Gibbs’ first days at NIS Camp Pendleton — the precursor to NCIS — under team leader Mike Franks (Kyle Schmid). Harmon, who serves as an executive producer on the series alongside his son, also lends his voice as its narrator.
“One of the biggest jobs in creating NCIS: Origins was just going back to the original show and seeing what the timeline is, and how do we fit into that, and honor all of the things that have already been said and done in the original show,” Monreal, who serves as co-showrunner with North, explains over the phone from set. “So it’s like this giant puzzle that we’re working with.”
Another piece was finding an actor who could fill Harmon’s historic shoes. That is, until Austin Stowell entered the room. “We just knew when Austin came in that he was Gibbs,” he recalls. “He embodied it. His talent is limitless — his dedication to the role, studying Mark, studying the show — he has a similar leadership quality that Mark had on set that bleeds into Gibbs the character.”
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Stowell, whose credits include Bridge of Spies and The Hating Game, remembers the exact date (January 8th!) that he first learned about NCIS: Origins. After an initial reading, the 39-year-old was jetted out to Los Angeles for an audition with Monreal, North, and Mark and Sean Harmon all in attendance. “At the end of the audition, after some direction from Mark, he said, ‘There you go. If I were you, I would just walk out of the room right now,’” Stowell recalls. “So I just walked out of the room. I went back to Vermont and went back about my life.”
When North and Monreal called Stowell to tell him he’d landed the role one month later, the actor nearly didn’t pick up. “Where I live is off the grid a bit,” Stowell explains. “I walked back into the house, just got back on to service again, and there was a phone call coming through. So, truly, two minutes before then, I wouldn’t have gotten the call. And it was David and Gina and they were telling me that, essentially, my life was about to change.” (The trio are aware that Stowell almost missing the call because he was in nature might just be the most Gibbs thing ever. “We laughed so hard about that,” North says.)
After learning he’d landed the role, Stowell began pouring himself into it both mentally and physically, learning everything he could about the Marines and adapting his fitness program. He’s also been “doing my due diligence to the fandom” by catching up on as many NCIS episodes as he can, often fitting them in while at the gym or cooking.
“When I first met David and Gina, they asked if I was going to be ready for such a big commitment like this and I told them, ‘You always have all of me,’” the actor confesses. “I just want to give everything to this. I know what it means to the fans. I know what Gibbs represents to a whole lot of people out there. I know what the show represents to a whole lot of people out there, and I don’t want to let them down. I’m giving everything I can to give them something new and fresh, but also something tried and true at the same time.”
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It helps that the Gibbs viewers meet in NCIS: Origins has yet to fully embody the no-nonsense special agent from the original series. “The Gibbs that we find in our show — it’s not the guy that the fans are used to,” Stowell explains. “This is someone who’s going through a lot of pain, going through a time in his life where he doesn’t even know if he wants to stick around, quite honestly. He suffered a tremendous tragedy just four months before we pick up this show and there’s a lot of newness in his life. There’s lots of firsts going on right now.”
NCIS fans will recall that it was revealed in the third season that Gibbs’ wife, Shannon, and daughter, Kelly, were both murdered prior to the events of the show. He is very much still reeling from the immense loss of his family on NCIS: Origins. “I think this is totally fair to say that our show is a bit darker, a bit more introspective, than the Mothership,” Stowell says, referring to the original series. “It’s a more raw look at these characters. Gets much more personal.”
Along the way, Gibbs will get to know his fellow agents — from golden boy Benjamin “Randy” Randolf (Caleb Martin Foote) to Vera Strickland (Diany Rodriguez), Franks’ first partner who previously appeared in a 2013 episode of NCIS. And, speaking of Franks, Gibbs’ bond with the brusque team leader, played by Muse Watson on NCIS, will also be examined. “The dynamic between Gibbs and Franks is complicated,” North says. “It’s one that’s cloaked in secrecy to the other team [members], but it’s also very much a father-son relationship.”
Together, Monreal says the team will explore a new case each week, with a larger case that “really gets under a team’s skin in a deeper way” looming across the season. However, given the technological restraints of the ‘90s, they’ll have to use some inventive methods to track down their suspects — and utilize a few pay phones, CB radios, microfiche machines, and pagers, too.
“A show like this, you’re so used to going down to, say, Abby’s lab or Kasie’s lab, seeing her fingers dance on a keyboard and pull up DNA, and you find your suspect. We don’t have any of that,” North says. “That’s really solved by investigation skills and thinking things through. We’re using the emotion of the characters to really reveal who our characters are in the process of working these whodunnit cases.”
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While Stowell isn’t trying to do an impression of Gibbs, he’s aware there’s a lot he can learn from Harmon about the character. “He’s lived this for 20 years, and he has this helpful knowledge about the character and about how he approaches certain things,” he says. “There are certain behaviors, and certain… call them lines in the sand, that are strong within Gibbs. And so I wanted to make sure I was paying respect to the man and to the character.”
He adds that he has frequent conversations with Harmon, Monreal, and North on how to best showcase Gibbs’ evolution throughout the season. “We talked about Gibbs Sense, like Spidey Sense,” he teases. “He isn’t fully formed. And again, that’s a big part of what I loved about this opportunity is that I get to go on that journey with the audience [and see] how Gibbs becomes Gibbs.”
And, even more than Gibbs, Monreal hopes that the show’s found family dynamic will entice both new and longtime fans of the franchise. “I think what makes the original NCIS so watchable and so beloved is that it’s really about a family, and we’ve tried to do that here,” she says. “We’ve created a family with our agents, and I hope that those family bonds shine through for our audience, and they want to come spend time with our family every week.”
NCIS: Origins premieres on Monday, Oct. 14, at 10 p.m. ET/PT, on CBS.
