What Mark Harmon Told Austin Stowell at His ‘NCIS: Origins’ Screen Test

For 18 full seasons (and four episodes of a 19th), Mark Harmon starred as Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS. But when it came time to tell the story we hadn’t heard yet, of Gibbs’ early days at NIS, he gave his stamp of approval to Austin Stowell during the screen test, the NCIS: Origins star shared with Brian Dietzen and Diona Reasonover on the latest episode of the NCIS: Partners & Probies podcast.

When Dietzen noted that Stowell has access to the person who originated his role and asked about any collaboration with Harmon when forming the character, The Hating Game star revealed they didn’t speak until his screen test.

“In the middle of the screen test, he comes up, he says, ‘Can I have a minute?’ and he kind of pulls me to the corner of the room, looks me straight in the eye, puts his hands on my shoulders, he goes, ‘Now’s the time. Trust yourself. You have this. Trust yourself,’” Stowell shared.

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“It shot power right through my spine, and I came into that last scene, I all of a sudden could feel Gibbs,” he continued. “I felt this kind of inner confidence, this inner ‘I might be wrong, but I’m going to follow my heart.’ Gibbs is a guy who just listens to his gut over and over again and figures it out later, whether or not his gut was right, knowing that it’s OK to be wrong, you’re just going to have to learn from that. And so in that moment, it was that feeling of alright, trust yourself, I’m going to go full bore on this thing.”

Stowell then recalled reading a scene between Gibbs and his father, Jackson (Robert Taylor). “When I was done with the scene, you have that moment afterwards where you don’t know if they’re going to ask you to do it again or whatnot, and Mark just said, ‘If I were you, I’d walk out right now.’” Stowell took that advice: “I said, ‘Thanks very much, everybody, have a good day,’ and just walked away.”

Dietzen called it a “gift … to have someone just to validate and say, ‘Be who you are, you have this, do your thing,’” and Stowell agreed.

“For a guy like Mark to tap somebody else, to play this character is a wonderful gift to give to somebody. He could’ve said no. He could’ve said no so many times. He could’ve shut it down and said, ‘You know what? People love this character that I created, and I don’t want to mess with it,’” he said. “So the fact that he said yes to doing it and the fact [that] he said yes to me, to have that vote of confidence come from him is a big pat on the back.”

NCIS: Origins, Season 3 Premiere, Tuesday, October 6, 10/9c, CBS