CRAVE ONLINE: Mark Harmon on 'NCIS'
Harmon tells us about playing Special Agent Gibbs for nine years and offers his thoughts on the longevity of the series.
By Fred Topel
April 18, 2012
Mark Harmon has been on TV longer than most of the people I’m interviewing this week. NCIS reached its 200th episode earlier this year, a fact which was highlighted during a panel at the Television Critics Association to mark the occasion. I got lots of questions in with Harmon and he had a lot to say...
... CraveOnline: Is it hard to play the same character for nine years?
Mark Harmon: "You know what? It's not. It's a pleasure. This remains fresh. We just celebrated 200 episodes. It doesn't feel like 200 episodes. Doesn't feel like nine years. There are other things on this show more important than the size of your trailer, and it's always been about the work. I've felt that we've always, in the beginning we had control over nothing except what we did each day in the work, and I believe that remains the same.
These writers continue to challenge us, and there's new things in these characters all the time. You might play something for six years, and all of a sudden the seventh find out that something you've been playing was a little bit changed, but that's because these writers keep digging. The challenge is still there. We just did the 200th episode, and that was as challenging as any episode we've done.
For everybody, not just the actors, for the entire crew, which is one of the great treats of being part of this team is watching this crew get a script in advance and you start hearing the rumblings. "Oh, that's hard because what we've got to do, we've got to move this diner down underneath the 6th Street bridge. How are we going to do that?" And they start game planning. They start putting on their game face.
By the time we get to shooting, there's a real gathering of so many usually talented professionals on this show who are just asked to do their job and not worry about looking over their shoulder. They just do the work and it's a fun place to work for all of us because of that. Gary [Glasberg] heads that. That's his doing..."
NCIS airs Tueday at 8/7C on CBS.
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