Video intervista ad USA Today, 03.03.2010

By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY
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 (tonight, 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.

"It's important to be gracious, to realize it's not always like this. But right now, this is cooking," Harmon says. "There's an audience that found this show and supports this show and loves this show. It's fun to go out there. It's hard to walk through an airport now" without hearing from someone about the show.

And the role of Gibbs, a leading-man type with the quirks of a character role, is a good fit for the former UCLA quarterback who early in his career tried to stretch by seeking character parts. It's an evolution for the actor, from People's Sexiest Man Alive 1986 to father figure for some of NCIS' younger actors.

"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."

Partners at home

Harmon and Gibbs do share leadership skills, and Harmon's carpentry background was an inspiration for the character's basement boat-building project, Johnson says. Harmon once told producers of helping a neighbor build a biplane in his garage.

But Harmon and Gibbs part company in many ways. On set, for example, Harmon smiles. He talks more than the taciturn team leader, chatting and joking during breaks in shooting. He isn't secretive or withdrawn, as Gibbs is, colleagues say.

And unlike Gibbs, he doesn't have a coffee addiction. "I maybe have a cup in the morning, maybe a partial one in the afternoon," he says. On camera, he's mostly drinking green tea.

Harmon is a prankster, too, 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 affectionately.

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 regrets that Weatherly has since been hit "when he's picking out oranges in the supermarket.")

Harmon is hardly the loner Gibbs is. He and Pam Dawber, who have been married since 1987, have two sons, Sean, 21, and Ty, 18. Harmon acts occasionally with Dawber, performing in Love Letters, and he credits her with managing the home front during his time on NCIS.

"It's the arc of this show over a number of years, where it started and where it is now. She's been part of all that. She's been running the home. It's a time-consuming occupation, and she's done a really good job."

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.

He credits Dawber with alerting him to a 1996 accident on their street, in which two teens were trapped in their car after a crash. Harmon, wielding a 12-pound sledgehammer, broke the window glass and pulled them out before the vehicle blew up. "None of that happens without Pam walking up the street and investigating it further."

He sounds like Gibbs might, downplaying his reaction: "I don't see it as any thought process. Either you do or you don't." Then he adds a wry footnote: "If the car blows up and kills me and the kids in the car, then you'd be doing this interview with my wife about how stupid it was."

The California native, who briefly attended law school, got his first taste of acting when he spent some time on a Hollywood set during his senior year at UCLA. An avid athlete and the son of Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon, he likes the team element inherent in making a TV show or movie. "I just believe no one does it alone."

A no-name beginning

Early on in his career, Harmon received mostly small roles. "When I first started, (it was), 'Ma'am, can I see your license?' That was me. The guys I played didn't have names. I was the cop, the farmer next door."

He received 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.)

When a Los Angeles production of Mark Medoff's The Wager was being cast, producers wanted Harmon to play the jock; he sought, and won, the role of the nerdy chemistry professor.

"For me, stretching in that direction was progress," he says. Shortly thereafter, he secured a significant TV role, Dr. Bobby Caldwell, on the acclaimed medical drama St. Elsewhere.

Weatherly admires Harmon's acting range: "He's got a great Everyman quality, but also the Gibbs side of him, which is a steely, edgy guy." In The Deliberate Stranger, where Harmon played serial killer Ted Bundy, Weatherly says he showed "this uneasy easiness ... the promise of a threat."

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. Recalls Johnson: "We all looked at that work. And everybody said, 'He's Gibbs.' "

Harmon is reticent to talk about one bump in NCIS' path to the top: the ouster of Bellisario after Season 4, amid complaints about late scripts and a less-than-smooth-running operation. "It's not as big a deal as people make it sound," Harmon says. "Showrunners leave. ... Don was here, and then he left. And then Shane Brennan came here, and now he's on the other show (NCIS: Los Angeles) and Gary Glasberg is here."

When asked for detail, he responds generally: "It's important how you treat people. ... This is a hard enough thing to do when everything is going right. We've made changes, and we're better organized now, and I think that continues. I think we're better now than we were a year ago."

Bellisario did not respond to a request for comment. But Johnson provides a little more detail: "There were times when scripts were late, and it was just hard for the cast to work. I think (Harmon's) thing to the network and studio was, 'Let's find a way not to do this.' "

NCIS has risen in the ratings since that change. The series (averaging 20.2 million viewers) is up 11% this year, an unusual rise for a show this long into its run, and especially for one that faces the juggernaut American Idolon Tuesdays. NCIS has even grown 16% this season in young adults.

'Papa Smurf'

Tonight's episode, "Mother's Day," shines more light on Gibbs' family connections. Gena Rowlands plays his former mother-in-law, in a story that starts with the murder of her Navy fiancé.

The episode has a real family connection for Harmon: son Sean, a film student, plays a younger version of Gibbs in flashback. "He did a nice job," the proud father says.

The younger actors also 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.

If he leads them, Harmon says, it's by example.

"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."

And asked about plans a few years down the line, the actor — who has one more season on his contract — advocates a disciplined approach for all.

"I'm focused in on what I have here," he says. "It's important for all of us on the show to honor our contracts and come to work prepared. What's beyond that is questionable. I don't know any actor signing a deal who thinks eight, seven years down the line he's going to be still doing it."

But Harmon doesn't take his situation for granted. "It's a nice place to work. It's so important to appreciate that."

ehi la cosa che mi ha colpito e' quello che dice su Brennan, ho capito bene, o le emozioni di questi giorni mi hanno definitivamente rincoglionito? Fa intendere o no che Brennan e' possibile che faccia il volo dalla finestra in favore di Gary Glasberg? Come mi dispiace......