Mark Harmon Revealed What He Really Thought About Sasha Alexander’s ‘NCIS’ Departure
NCIS has seen many stars come and go over the years. But perhaps the departure that still remains the most shocking in the franchise’s history is Sasha Alexander’s. Not too long ago, Mark Harmon reflected on Alexander’s time on the show, and addressed whether or not the writers handled her exit the right way.
How Mark Harmon responded to Sasha Alexander’s shocking ‘NCIS’ departure decades later
NCIS fans have had to say their goodbyes to many of the show’s original cast members since its 2003 debut. But very few fans expected to see Alexander leave the show as soon as she did. She debuted along with the rest of the original NCIS crew as special agent Caitlin Todd. From season 1, Alexander’s Todd seemed poised to be a long-lasting part of the show, similarly to her co-stars Harmon, Weatherly, and others. But that wasn’t the case, as Alexander lasted two seasons before she was written out of the series.
It wasn’t just Alexander’s exit that had NCIS fans flabbergasted back then, but also her character’s almost unceremonious end. Todd was killed off in the show’s season 2 finale by a character simply looking to hurt Harmon’s Leroy Gibbs. The ending was such a surprise that even certain crew members didn’t know about it until the day of the shooting.
“Sasha called me in February 2005 and said they were letting her out of her contract,” Weatherly once told TV Insider. “But I don’t think anyone knew she was going to get shot in the head—I didn’t know until I saw the special-effects guy attaching a blood pack to her hair. If you watch the moment where she gets shot, I flinch because I could see the guy hitting the button. It’s like the kid in North by Northwest who puts his fingers in his ears right before Cary Grant fires a gun.”
Todd’s death had such an impact on the show and its fans that it’s still talked about to this day. So much so that Harmon, who’s also retired from his NCIS duties, recently reflected on Alexander’s exit in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“And that happened for a very specific reason,” Harmon said of Todd’s death. “That was an actor’s choice to leave the show and then a creative choice to do it a certain way. Then people go, ‘Wow, that really shocked me.’ It’s like, ‘Well, good, I guess. Right?’ Because people are talking about it, and yet, is that something that’s normally done? No, but then that’s also the reason you try to be part of those. You try to catch onto a few of those in a career. And if they work, great. If they don’t work, then we wouldn’t be talking about it.”
Did Sasha Alexander regret leaving ‘NCIS’?
Alexander has been very honest about her decision to leave NCIS. In the end, the actor admitted that she couldn’t maintain the show’s taxing schedule. She also commended the show’s writers for coming up with an effective way to conclude Caitlin Todd’s story.
“People don’t realize that on a network show, you make 24 episodes a year — that’s 10½ months a year, 17 hours a day,” she once told TV Guide. “It’s hard core. Plus, people really loved the character, and the way they did it was really shocking…it was a bullet to the head, you know?”
The show’s creator, Donald Bellisario, remembered very vividly how hard it was for Alexander to leave the show. Alexander’s emotional resignation demonstrated that NCIS’s work schedule wasn’t for the feint of heart.
“Sasha came in… with tears in her eyes, she said, ‘I just can’t work this hard,’” Bellisario once told Chicago Tribune (via Newsweek). “We work very long hours, and Sasha just didn’t feel she was physically up to that kind of time and commitment.”
However, Alexander didn’t regret her decision.
“I really firmly believe in my heart that I would not be where I am today — happily married, with two kids, doing things creatively that I want — if I had stayed. I didn’t want to wake up and be in my forties and go, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ But people don’t understand,” she added.
