Michael Weatherly Once Called Tackling Mark Harmon in a Special ‘NCIS’ Episode ‘a Gift’
NCIS star Mark Harmon and his partner Michael Weatherly were able to dig deep into their characters on a special NCIS episode. But Weatherly quipped that the best part about the occasion was getting rough with Harmon.
Why Michael Weatherly enjoyed tackling his ‘NCIS’ co-star
Weatherly and Harmon were both allowed to get pretty physical with each other as their NCIS characters. In one of the show’s episodes “Baltimore,” the series took a step backwards to explore the history of Weatherly’s Tony DiNozzo. The series was already in its eighth season back then, so Harmon felt NCIS put in enough legwork over the years to explore characters’ backstories.
“By the time we started doing flashbacks, which was a number of years in, we’d earned it. Certainly as an actor you have more to grip on to,” Harmon once told TV Guide. “It’s interesting to hear Michael talk about how, when he played this guy in this episode, he learned he was earnest, traditional and calm in the heat of action — a lot like the guy who plays him. But those are choices he can make 11 years in that he couldn’t have made in Year 1. There’s still a ton of mystery to the characters, and still a lot of growth, too.”
The episode also featured a brief confrontation between Harmon’s Gibbs and Weatherly’s DiNozzo. Weatherly considered the interaction one of the highlights of the show.
“The great gift of ‘Baltimore’ was that I got to tackle Mark — given his real-life history [as a star UCLA quarterback]. Then I turned him over to cuff him and he punched me in the face! And yet it wasn’t antagonistic,” Weatherly said. “Those characters are both only children, I believe, and there’s a loneliness to Gibbs. He’s a sniper. He’s somebody who’s in his own world. And that’s something with Tony, too. They line up a little bit, even though they’re wildly, photonegatively different — you would think.”
Michael Weatherly’s first reaction to Mark Harmon’s famous Gibbs slap was to thank him
The chemistry between Harmon and Weatherly was just as essential for their characters as the writing. Producer Gary Glasberg gave insight into how Harmon and Weatherly’s interactions kept adding new layers to their respective parts.
“The more years that go by, the stronger the understanding between these two fantastic actors. There are little things I pick up on in the editing room — I’ll see a response that works with just a look, where maybe earlier it may have required a line. That nuance is fun for me,” Glasberg said.
Perhaps this was on display the most the first time Harmon used his now iconic Gibbs slap on Weatherly. Harmon famously confided that the moment was completely improvised, so much so that it left the show’s cast and crew stunned.
“My memory of when that happened, we were doing a scene,” Harmon once said to Premiere. “And he was on a Navy ship and he was talking to a female petty officer. I think this was in year one, early. And he was doing what he does, which is sometimes stay on script and sometimes not. I just reached over and smacked him. I tried to put him back on line. It was an instinct. It wasn’t thought, I didn’t think about it, I just did it.”
But Harmon also gave everyone on set kudos for remaining in character after the slap.
“To his credit, he stayed in the scene; he didn’t break. And I didn’t break. And the girl in the scene playing the petty officer, she was shocked, she was surprised. And she stayed there, and we just kept going. And people liked it. And every episode I was smacking him–maybe too much. We still do that occasionally, but sparingly. That’s where it came from,” he said.
Weatherly also gave his own perspective on the slap, and couldn’t help feel appreciative towards Harmon’s quick thinking.
“I remember the first time I ever said ‘Thank you’ after a head slap. Which was an instinctive, unscripted moment of silliness that got a laugh in rehearsal, so it stayed in. And then, as I thought about it, I was like, ‘You know what? That’s really true!’ DiNozzo is like, ‘Thank you for reminding me to get my head back in the game.’ He needs Gibbs that way,” Weatherly said.
