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Saturday, 13 March 2010 04:43

NCIS

Mark Harmon, ‘NCIS’ star, is all teamwork, all the time

MARINA DEL REY, Calif. — The poor corpse has been lying motionless on the concrete seemingly for hours on a sunny but brisk afternoon. Finally, during a break in location shooting for "NCIS," the actor gets a chance to rise.
Mark Harmon leans over to give him a hand.

It's a small gesture, but it reflects the one-for-all attitude Harmon has helped instill on the set of "NCIS," the CBS criminal procedural that is TV's most-watched scripted series (Tuesdays, 8 ET/PT).

"He made it very clear from the beginning: We are all the same," says Cote de Pablo, who plays agent Ziva David. "When lunch comes, he stands at the end of the line. He doesn't cut lines."

If all are equals, however, Harmon is first among them. He is the leader on camera, and behind the scenes, on the seventh-season series. The drama infused with humor follows a team of investigators assigned to crimes connected to the Navy or Marines. Harmon's Leroy Jethro Gibbs is "boss," as subordinates often call him.

"Harmon has that very strong kind of presence that's quiet but speaks volumes, and I think that was incorporated (by creator Donald Bellisario) so that Gibbs, with a look, could say things to his team without saying a word, and they got it. And Mark grew with that," executive producer Charles Johnson says.

Harmon, 58, whose roles have ranged from cop to doctor, gym teacher to serial killer during more than 30 years of acting, realizes the success of "NCIS" is something special.

"I love (Gibbs') flaws. It was important early on to make sure that, every time this guy pulled a trigger, he didn't hit something — that there was no red 'S' on his jacket, that he was real," he says. (Harmon does voice Superman in the new animated DVD Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.)

Gibbs "can be really good at his job, which he is, but so much of his life is really tormented and dark, and I don't know if he'll ever recover from it." He pauses. "I think he would be an uncomfortable guy to have dinner with."

Where Gibbs is serious, Harmon is a prankster, de Pablo says. She has found a dead lizard hanging in her trailer, a cockroach by her toothbrush and a bug — "a big, thick critter" — in her drink, all courtesy of Harmon.

"He's such a kid in so many ways," she says.

That looseness carries over to filming, giving actors room to improvise. Harmon, on impulse, introduced an "NCIS" staple, the head slap, during a scene where Michael Weatherly's Anthony DiNozzo was going off on one of his signature verbal runs.

Harmon is hardly the loner Gibbs is, either. He and Pam Dawber, who have been married since 1987, have two sons, Sean, 21, and Ty, 18. It helps that Dawber, who co-starred with Robin Williams on the late-'70s comedy "Mork & Mindy," understands what it's like to be on a top-rated show. "She knows it doesn't come around all the time and has respect for it," Harmon says.

Early on in his career, Harmon received mostly small roles. He went on to receive his first Emmy nomination in 1977 for what he calls an afternoon of work on the TV movie "Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years," and gained experience in Los Angeles theater in the early '80s, when for a time he was roofing by day and acting by night. (He once built his own house out of stone.)

Shortly thereafter, he secured a significant TV role, Dr. Bobby Caldwell, on the acclaimed medical drama "St. Elsewhere."

Bellisario initially didn't visualize Harmon as the flinty former Marine sniper Gibbs, but he changed his mind after seeing the actor's Emmy-nominated turn as a stoic Secret Service agent on "The West Wing."

The younger actors on the show see Harmon somewhat as a father figure, in terms of his character and in real life. "We're fond of calling him Papa Smurf. I'm not sure how fond he is to be called Papa Smurf, but we love it," says Sean Murray, who plays agent Tim McGee.

His real life son, 21-year-old Sean recently guest-starred on an episode of "NCIS," playing a younger version of Gibbs in a flashback with actress Gena Rowlands. "He did a nice job," the proud father says.

The series (averaging 20.2 million viewers) has put up impressive stats, up 11 percent this year.

Yet Harmon remains low-key about it all.

"I don't care who's No. 1 on the call sheet or how big my trailer is. I care about the work," he says. "I don't care who gets the laughs. I just care that the laugh comes."

By Bill Keveney • USA Today • March 13, 2010

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