By Mallory Mattingly
NCIS legend Mark Harmon revealed what initially drew him to the long-running naval procedural drama — and explained what changed.
“When I first joined the show, part of what they sold me on was that this was all going to be based on real cases. But pretty soon, it settles into murder-a-week because that’s television, right?” Harmon told The Hollywood Reporter.
Since the TV series didn’t exactly follow real cases, Harmon decided to get involved with writing Navy-focused nonfiction books.
“The idea to do this book in the first place was: If we can tell the real history of this agency, then I’m interested, and I’m interested if Leon Carroll — whom I met 20 years ago as a technical advisor on the show — is with me on this. That’s what we did in the first book, and we jumped off with a World War II story and the early formation of what became NIS,” he explained.
Related: Mark Harmon Officially Exits NCIS as Series Regular
Carroll, a former NCIS Special Agent, and Harmon co-wrote Ghosts of Honolulu:
The pair’s second book,
A synopsis of the book reads, “Using a blend of research and interviews with the NIS agents who were directly involved, Ghosts of Panama reveals the untold, clandestine story of counterintelligence professionals placed in a pressure cooker assignment of historic proportions.”
Though NCIS didn’t go exactly as Harmon expected, he certainly enjoyed his time on the show, leading it for 19 seasons before exiting in 2021.
“I’m thrilled the show has been as successful as it’s been. The first day on the show, we worked 22 hours, so that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Harmon added in the THR interview. “There were a lot of changes in those first three or four years. People don’t realize that, but this show didn’t jump out.”
He’s still involved in the franchise through NCIS: ORIGINS, which he narrates, executive produces and cameos in.
“That’s been fun because both [showrunners] Gina [Lucita Monreal] and David [J. North] have a long history with the show and I go way back with both of them,” he said last year of ORIGINS. “So, me doing the narration was always going to be part of this, so that wasn’t a surprise. What is the surprise is talking about Gibbs. Sometimes I don’t have a lot of stuff to do in an episode and then sometimes I’ve got a boatload of stuff to do and that’s putting words in the mouth of a character that traditionally said a lot with very little.”
CBS launched its stacked NCIS lineup last Tuesday. New episodes of NCIS air at 8 p.m., followed by NCIS: ORIGINS at 9 p.m. and NCIS: SYDNEY at 10 p.m.
Read Next: Mark Harmon Returns to NCIS Universe in NCIS: ORIGINS
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