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Austin Stowell & Mark Harmon Talk ‘NCIS: Origins’ on CBS Mornings

NCIS: Origins at PaleyFest Fall TV Previews 2024

The Paley Center for Media zoomed with the stars of NCIS: Origins to talk about the series.

NCIS: Origins team talks ’90s, Gibbs’ past, and more

Cracking the case: NCIS: Origins star Austin Stowell on becoming young Gibbs in the ‘darker’ prequel series

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY – The actor says the young Gibbs-led prequel provides a “more raw look at these characters” and “gets much more personal” than the original “NCIS.”
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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

Gibbs Is Back!

TV INSIDER – ‘NCIS’ turns back the clock for ‘NCIS: Origins,’ the first prequel series (and show number six) in the ratings-blockbuster franchise.
Gibbs’ Rule #8: Never take anything for granted. That one hit us hard when Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), the sometimes grumpy but always gutsy special agent in charge of NCIS, unexpectedly retired to go fishing in Alaska in 2021. We’ll get another chance to appreciate the “grab your gear” guy in NCIS: Origins, a 1991-set prequel in which the young Gibbs (Austin Stowell) starts work at what was then known as NIS at the Camp Pendleton office in California. The icing? Harmon returns to narrate.

“Mark Harmon has done a job that actors dream to do. He’s captured the world and so that is just slightly daunting,” says Stowell who watched numerous episodes to prepare. “But getting to know Mark has really been paramount to me stepping into these shoes and trying to fill them.”

Harmon’s key words of advice to Stowell were “trust yourself.” Harmon also acknowledges the challenge for an actor to play an existing character, saying, “This is a little different because some things are already in place and an audience knows where this leads years ahead.”

The idea for the series came from Harmon’s son Sean, who’d played the younger Gibbs in NCIS flashbacks. “I believe that very few people are actually ‘born leaders’ and are instead forged into them, and Gibbs is no exception,” says Sean Harmon. “Digging into the backstory of ‘the boss’ seemed like a good opportunity to find out why Gibbs turned out the way he did and who was around to influence him on that journey.”

Mark Harmon suggested the best people to create the series would be longtime NCIS writers David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal who executive produce and are co-showrunners. They asked the senior Harmon to narrate.

The two-hour premiere introduces a Gibbs fresh back from Desert Storm, grieving the loss of his wife and daughter and trying to get his bearings with a new team. One of them is a younger version of a face familiar to NCIS fans, Gibbs’ confidante, Special Agent Mike Franks (Kyle Schmid, Six, in a role originated by Muse Watson as the older Franks).

“Franks is the one who brings Gibbs into NIS. It was an opportunity to perhaps save a lost soul,” says Schmid who emailed and spoke with Watson as part of his preparation. “Taking on a character played by such a wonderful actor is a bit of a challenge. You have to play by a certain set of rules. The mustache is a trademark of Muse’s. I wear dark brown contacts every day at work. I took on a dialect coach, so Kyle Schmid now sounds like Mike Franks all the time.”

The rest are new characters including Special Agent Cecilia “Lala” Dominguez (Mariel Molino).

“I’m interpreting someone who’s a former Marine, now a female agent at NIS and I’m excited to jump into that, especially in the Nineties, which is such an incredible era,” says Molino. “I love that there are no [cell] phones, no internet, no social media. Everything we portray is direct contact.”

So will any romance develop between her and Gibbs? “I’m trying to prove myself. It’s not a romantic vibe,” Stowell says. “They are kindred spirits, both bullheaded, stubborn and smart. They say opposites attract. So, what happens when people are the same?”

Gibbs’ first friend on the force is someone who’s not much like him at all: Special Agent Bernard “Randy” Randolf (Caleb Foote). “Gibbs is a bit of a lone wolf. Randy’s a bit of an extrovert. In this naval investigative setting, there’s hundreds of people, half of them in camouflage because it takes place on Camp Pendleton, and Gibbs is a deer in the headlights. Randy sees that and immediately goes out of his way to make this person feel welcome. We create a friendship pretty quickly,” Foote says. “It’s cool to create a character that helps Leroy Jethro Gibbs to become the great detective that he is.”

Not in the field but equally important in solving cases are the assistant medical examiner Dr. Lenora Friedman (Lori Petty, Orange is the New Black), and the head of the NIS forensics lab, Woodrow “Woody” Browne (Bobby Moynihan, Saturday Night Live).

“I’m the goofy scientist who figures out weird stuff. It’s like working with the Muppets, you immediately realize you are not the important part. You’re just there to make the Muppets look awesome,” says Moynihan, of supporting the NIS team. “I’m splicing a lot of videotape. I have a hundred million [paper] files. I don’t have a laptop. They show the old tech.”The first case will focus on a series of interconnected murders “that bounce off of our characters in a really emotional way,” North says. Adds Monreal, “Gibbs is thrown into this job and he’s in over his head, but in a way, this case is tailor-made for him, so he has an opportunity to shine.”

We’ll see a lot more emotion from the younger Gibbs than we’re used to as longtime NCIS fans. “The Gibbs that Gina and I wrote for so many years had learned to push it all that emotion down. This Gibbs hasn’t learned that yet,” says North.

NCIS: Origins, Series Premiere, Monday, October 14, 9/8c, CBS