For fans of “NCIS“It was a hard blow then Mark Harmon announced his departure. For almost twenty years, as Leroy Jethro Gibbs, he was the face of the cult series, which started as a spin-off of “JAG – On Order of Honor” – and has now spawned three successful spin-offs.
Since season 19, Gary Cole has taken over the reins of the NCIS Major Case Response Team as ex-FBI agent Alden Parker – no easy task, considering Mark Harmon’s shoes are quite big. But they almost got a little bigger. Because even though fans of the CBS series probably can’t imagine anyone other than Harmon in the role of Gibbs, the producers originally had other casting plans – In fact, they wanted one of Hollywood’s biggest stars ever to be the driving force behind ‘NCIS’!
This Hollywood icon was originally set to play Gibbs
Compared to the Executive producer Charles Floyd Johnson revealed that the role was for none other Harrison Ford Was conceived (through ). While it’s hard to imagine today how a Hollywood heavyweight like Harrison Ford would fit into the ensemble of “NCIS,” it makes sense that his chiseled hero personas served as a blueprint for Gibbs.
But in the end it became nothing more than a mind game. It was too unlikely that the ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Star Wars’ stars would actually join the series – so Johnson and his team looked for an adequate replacement, which they ultimately found in Mark Harmon.
It was certainly the right decision: Harmon has always been a TV actor first — and, unlike a blockbuster icon like Ford, had no trouble filling the same role for nearly two decades. Furthermore, Gibbs’ role would likely have been much smaller if Ford had played it. After all, the ‘Blade Runner’ actor would have had considerably less time due to his parallel film career.
And there’s something else that suggests the producers of ‘NCIS’ made the right decision: For many viewers, the series thrived in no small part thanks to the perfect chemistry between Harmon and the rest of the team – and it’s questionable whether that is also the case if an actor as strong as Harrison Ford would have been possible in this form!