There’s some juicy stuff in this new oral history of ratings juggernaut NCIS
20 years on, CBS's massive hit procedural has chewed through a lot of cast and crew—not always happily
Aux News NCIS
CBS ratings juggernaut NCIS is celebrating its 20th year on the air this month, and you know what that means: Gossip! Specifically, the incredibly successful boat-crimes show is the subject of a new oral history in The Hollywood Reporter this week, and while a lot of it is straight hagiography—NCIS produces warm feelings at its home network that are typically only associated with big, huge, stupid piles of money being generated for multiple decades at a time—the conversation does frequently veer into the show’s numerous high-profile departures. That includes those of stars Mark Harmon and Pauley Perrette, plus series creator/legendary TV producer Donald Bellisario, who everyone involved is careful to not outright say was fired because Harmon didn’t want to work with him anymore.
A lot of the juicier stuff in the oral history comes from series executive producer Charles Floyd Johnson, who’s been with the series since the beginning (and who notes, near the end, that he’s also maybe looking for an exit soon, after two decades of naval intrigue). Here, for instance, is Johnson talking about the split between Harmon—who everyone in the piece speaks of pretty warmly, characterizing him as a “leader”—and the “perfectionist” Bellisario, who became notorious for changing scripts on the day of shooting:
And so when we got to about year four, Harmon just felt like it was too hard. He never said to anybody, “Get rid of Don.” He just said, “This is too hard to work this way.” Eventually, the network went to Bellisario and said, “Maybe you should work from a distance from it and not be quite as involved in terms of the way you work.” And so Bellisario, by the fifth year, was gone.
(Bellisario contends that he’d “done enough on the show,” and that leaving was his decision.)
The oral history subjects are more circumspect about the departure of Perrette, who played the show’s most instantly recognizable character, perky Goth forensics expert Abby Scuito. But what’s there does confirm at least some of the stories surrounding Perrette’s departure back in 2018, including the fact that the inciting incident was her unhappiness over Harmon’s dog biting someone on the show’s set. “The dog kept coming with Harmon,” Johnson says, “And she felt it wasn’t safe for the show. By the end of that year, she just felt like it wasn’t working for her anymore, and it was time to move on.” (The history does not get into the stories that Harmon and Perrette refused to film together for their last several seasons on the show together, with each actor being scheduled to be on set on different days, and editing tricks used to make it look like they were in the room together.)
As for Harmon himself, who departed in the show’s 19th season, everybody is pretty overwhelmingly nice, pointing out that 18 years is a long time to do anything, and noting that he stayed on longer than he wanted to out of concern for his co-workers and crew. Johnson also touches briefly on the show’s tendency to get rid of female characters faster than male ones. (“Some fans complained that it was always women who went faster than the guys. But it did keep audiences’ attention.”) Oh, and they note some folks in the show’s fanbase—which nobody outright says is mostly older conservative people who love watching murders get solved on boats—really didn’t like that time they had Michelle Obama on. The piece then ends with representatives from both the studio and the network stating that the show “can go on forever,” which, in the context of an article at least partially about how NCIS chews through cast and creatives, is a nice, and not at all dystopian, note to go out on.
42 Comments
“That time they had Michelle Obama on.”I’d bet that ruffled more Boomer feathers than when Stacey Abrams was President of Earth in Star Trek: Discovery.
Pfft. I think the Boomers would have been tuned out by the time that episode aired.
What about when Morgan Freeman was President Of Earth in that comet-hits-the-Earth-Movie?
He got promoted to God in ‘Bruce Almighty’.
Hard to believe this all started with J.A.G.
Bro peak J.A.G. was great. but then Gibbs became a fan favorite. The J.A.G. tv universe keeps winning.
I will forever love them for their prime anti-hacking scene where Abi and the fat one had some seized computer plugged in and hooked to the internet (for some reason?) in the lab, because they were doing some forensic nerds shit on it, when the baddies were hacking into the computer, so of course the two nerds fire up a keyboard each (which was plugged into the same PC…?) and start some good ol’ Hollywood Counter-Hacking.After the usual rigmarole, Gibbs goes “Are the only hacking this computer?”“YES!”“Not our whole system?”“NO! We need to stop them before they delete the file-”And then the PC’s monitor goes black. Abi & co panic, what the hell happen.Cut to Gibbs holding the PC’s power cord he just yanked outta the wall. Beautiful.
http://Www.hackertyper.comfor all you Hollywood hacking needs.
Then they got so many complaints about that episode from people being the “Well achtually…” that they decided to never give any thought actual computer security again because they knew it would only piss off that select group.
Oh, yeah, love it. Literal-minded arseholes and all.But, to make it very clear: I fucking love how Gibbs handled that.There was also another time where Gibs was in a server, from which some malware was being sent, and McGee was about to give him instructions on how to find out which rack is resposnible fand how to-And Gibbs just pulls out the SiG and starts blastin’ servers.
Still watch—-comfort food TV. Nothing really more than that.I am NOT an OLD FART!*yells at cloud*
and what are clouds but farts that don’t smell as bad?
I’m still shaking my head that, when Sasha Alexander wanted to leave after one season, (19 year old spoiler alert) they couldn’t just have her go out on a triumphant note, they had to have her character get shot in the head. Yikes!
2 seasons. Her demise was at the end of season 2.
That next episode or two she featured in Season 3 were … uh … really something too, weren’t they?
Not everything has to be for everyone and I’m glad there are people who enjoy the show. It’s still weird to me that this show has been on so long and has been so popular, but I don’t know if I’ve ever watched an episode. Granted, I’m not a conservative Boomer, but still…
It was the thing that my parents and I watched during COVID over dinner (because when you can’t get a job and pandemic) and actually it IS interesting if you treat it like a soap opera and it’s about this group of people that you’ve invested time in. Eventually you start to ignore the murders and oh wait I’ve talked myself in fascism again
I didn’t even know Harmon had left. The only NCIS I watched for more than a couple episodes was the New Orleans one, mostly because I like Scott Bakula.
Scott Bakula (and also that Tokyo Drift Guy) are okay, but I’ve seen about 10 episodes total and all the boat crimes in New Orleans seem to happen at the same industrial park outside of Louis Armstrong Airport that also somehow is a short foot-chase distance to the French Quarter.
I had to quit the show because the accents (or lack of them) where just so distractingly bad. Bakula’s accent work was just embarrassing. How do you have a show set in New Orleans and no one except Lucas Black (whose accent is real) can make a decent attempt at sounding like they were from New Orleans? I could have done a Foghorn Leghorn imitation and I would sound more authentic than that show.
I’d probably only be able to watch that one until I’d get tired of him fixing what went wrong and leaping into the next broken time line.
Same here, but I get it. We all have our comfort zones and there’s something to be said for entertainment that isn’t challenging in the least. My parents loved drawing room mysteries of the Christie variety. My mom , especially, always knew exactly where things were headed after the first act, but I think that was part of the appeal.
Oh, I definitely enjoy some brain candy and I do like a murder mystery, but I can only handle those now if the sleuth isn’t overly entwined with the cops.
I watched it with the old guy I took care of a bit, I pretended Mark Harmon’s character was actually Freddy Shoop from Summer School.
I’m not a conservative boomer, I’m a very liberal Early X’er… I started watching during the Great Recession around 2008-9 after getting laid off for the better part of the year, partly because it was just on all the time, partly because I remembered Harmon from St. Elsewhere. Started watching Bones and Cold Case at the same time. Gotta do something to kill the time, and I got hooked on all three shows.
I have never watched a single episode of NCIS, but I’m relieved to hear that apparently Mark Harmon is as nice a guy as he has always come across. Had a soft spot for him going way back to Summer School. Also: of course a show like NCIS could theoretically go on forever, the same way that something like Law & Order could, or Grey’s Anatomy, or anything that’s relatively procedural and in that sort of work space where you’re probably never gonna run out of stories and there’s enough built in reason for people to retire, move to another precinct or hospital, or whatever.
I love his Steven Seagal story:
“I just read the greatest screenplay ever written…!…”
On forever, you say?What the shit? Water Rats x Sea Patrol x US hegemony?Lisa McCune better be in this.
I recognize one person, and that’s Mark Harmon, who doesn’t count because he’s Mark Harmon. This show’s endurance confuses me. To be fair, I was confused by Criminal Minds, too, until they did that season on Paramount+ that was pretty dark and also starred Zach Gilford and Nick D’Agosto and it was pretty good and I accidentally watched it and enjoyed it…I guess I’ll wait until NCIS releases a new season on Shudder that involves, I don’t know, child-abducting clowns and maybe like a serial killer quinceanera. Maybe that’ll hook me.
They got Ken from Veep as his replacement and it breaks my heart a little.
Bro, do you even Office Space?
I saw that movie once, years ago. Thank you for reminding me of it I’m always looking for things to download and add to my plex server.
I’ve never watched NCIS but from the few clips I’ve seen, it certainly seems like mostly fluff harmless busy work/ folding laundry television. So I can understand why something like that has lasted so long.But two shows I’ll never understand is law and order svu and criminal minds – the handful of episodes I’ve watched of either show were just so dark and miserable and depressing. I just can’t possibly imagine why people want to binge marathons of sex crimes and sadistic serial killers in the same way they would binge far more lighthearted and silly crime shows.
I thought the goth chick was cute.
NCIS was a good show for many years, but then the introduction of one character ruined it: Ellie Bishop.Bishop could just immediately solve every case, off the top of her head, with no real evidence and crazy research and she ignored her NCIS teammates too.The fact that one of the show’s strengths was every character was flawed in their own special way was suddenly thrown out the window. Ellie was perfect.The show really became unwatachable after that.
I always wondered about the shows theme song. Like it’s a show for old conservative people so why does the theme song sound like something you’d hear at a really lame late 90’s rave?
Obviously because those ravers are about to reach retirement age and there’s not enough appropriate content for their generation. Meanwhile, NCIS was frontloading their golden years with techno theme songs and goth girl forensic analysts.
You STOP it now!
Marge Madness has got a lot of oral history with Da Poot, if ya know what I mean
Juice is good, eh?
Not a boomer, not conservative, not white and I used to love the show. Like a lot of people, we only picked it up after the reruns popped up on USA. I really liked the characters and the relationships(I’m big on found family)and we like procedurals. It was pretty mindless fun until it wasn’t anymore. Haven’t watched in years and all the original cast is gone anyway. Only thought of it with David McCallum’s passing.