For nearly two decades, Mark Harmon was the face of NCIS as Supervisory Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs.
When he finally walked away from the CBS procedural in Season 19, fans were left wondering what really went down behind the scenes.\n\nOver the years, the cast has dropped telling details about what the show’s undisputed leader was actually like when the cameras stopped rolling.
David McCallum, who played the beloved Dr. Donald ‘Ducky’ Mallard, admitted the set wasn’t always smooth sailing.
There was always a certain degree of chaos,’ McCallum shared back in 2007. Mark was instrumental in putting our house in order—I really thank him for that.
Michael Weatherly, who played Tony DiNozzo, noticed something unusual about Harmon’s approach to Hollywood.
He’s a very rare person in this business because there’s no assistant, no entourage,’ Weatherly revealed in 2009. Mark is largely just a very straightforward, approachable, calm, assertive guy. He’s not a people pleaser.
That intense work ethic made sense to Sean Murray, who plays Tim McGee. Murray actually met Harmon when he was just 15 on a project called Harts of the West, where Harmon stepped in last-minute to play a drunken rodeo clown.
We wouldn’t be here, 16 years later, if it wasn’t for Harmon,’ Murray said. ‘Harmon is a very special individual.
For Cote de Pablo, the connection went even deeper, mirroring her on-screen dynamic as Ziva David.
He was always like a father figure to me,’ de Pablo shared, explaining that their real-life mentor relationship matched what fans saw on television.
But perhaps the most telling detail about Harmon’s on-set reality came from Weatherly years later.
When Weatherly left to star in his own CBS series, Bull, he finally understood why his former boss carried himself the way he did.
It’s been very illuminating and given me a great deal of insight and regard for what Mark Harmon was doing all those years,’ Weatherly admitted.
He recalled thinking back in the day, ‘How come he doesn’t have as much fun as the rest of us?’
It turns out, being the anchor of network television’s biggest show means carrying a weight the rest of the cast never had to feel.
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