Mark Harmon once discussed a significant improvement made to ‘NCIS’ that improved the series.
Mark Harmon struck gold when he was cast in the enormously acclaimed television series NCIS. NCIS, like other long-running television shows, underwent tremendous development and growth during its tenure. One of those adjustments was actually drafting scripts for the show as it progressed.
Mark Harmon once detailed how the performers on ‘NCIS’ functioned without a script.
Harmon has been with NCIS since the beginning. At the time, his name was mentioned alongside that of Harrison Ford and Kevin Bacon.
However, Harmon was the actor for whom NCIS made a concerted attempt to recruit. Others involved in the show assumed Harmon would pass on the series when casting director Susan Bluestein nominated him.
“Mark was a big deal, and everyone thought, ‘We’ll make an offer to Mark Harmon, and if we don’t get him, we’ll go through the list of who else we can get.'” Mark met with Don Bellisario, and they got along well enough that Mark agreed to do it.
“The show suddenly took on much more importance in my mind,” casting director Peter Golden recently told The Hollywood Reporter.
The casting of Harmon as Jethro Gibbs was said to create an impression on the show’s intended audience. However, the show was far from the ratings success it would become in later seasons. According to producer Mark Horowitz, the show didn’t achieve its commercial stride until the third season, when it was sold to the USA Network.
The show’s initial seasons’ weak ratings matched with a highly unorthodox approach to narrative on NCIS. According to a Larry King interview with Harmon, NCIS didn’t have a screenplay until later in the season.
“They used to be absent from this show. “We did this show without a script for four years,” Harmon explained.
Harmon stated that the NCIS actors relied on limited information to perform their duties.
“You had pages and sides. You went to work after reading maybe two acts of a play. “The scenes came in piecemeal, and you did them as you went,” he explained.
Mark Harmon has always stated that his ‘NCIS’ moments were both scripted and spontaneous.
Harmon claimed that the NCIS team had a lot of trust in each other throughout the years. Because of the advantages, the actors were not necessarily required to adhere to the script.
“We’ve worked together for a long time,” Harmon explained. “And it’s one of the great pleasures of this show to block a general rehearsal with actors who have appeared in over 200 episodes.” And you have faith. You put your faith in people going in different directions to try to mine things that may or may not work. And that is how we operate there.
That’s how we’ve always done things there. So, to answer your question, some of those events were scripted, while others were not. Nonetheless, some of them stuck, while others did not.”
Harmon believes that the show’s adaptability helped it to stand out among other procedural shows with similar formats.
“However, it really brings the format to what makes this show unique.” I mean, we’re all open. We all express ourselves. We’re all working together to get this done. And I could take any episode and any direction and point to several points in the episode that originated from wherever they came. So that’s how we do things,” Harmon once told TV Addict.
‘Gibbs Slap’ by Mark Harmon was fully unscripted.
Harmon’s ‘Gibbs Slap’ has become an iconic part of both the character and the program. The actor’s character had a habit of slapping his coworkers on the head to keep them in line and attentive. However, the iconic quirk began as an unscripted incident brought on by impulse. And Michael Weatherly, Harmon’s former co-star, was the first to get the slap.
“Every member of this cast, including Michael, is a tremendously talented actor.” “I remember we were doing a scene when that happened,” Harmon once told Premiere. “And he was on a Navy ship, speaking with a female petty officer.” This happened in the first year, I believe. And he was doing his thing, which is to sometimes stick to the script and sometimes not. I simply reached out and struck him. I attempted to reconnect him. It was instinctual. It wasn’t deliberate; I didn’t consider it; I just did it.”
Related News – Be sure to get some more news when it comes to NCIS.