NCIS: Origins Star Opens Up About Mary Jo’s Heartbreaking Past, Knows ‘It Is Going to Touch a Lot of Women’

This week on CBS‘ NCIS: Origins, viewers got to know a lot more about Field Operation Support Officer Mary Jo Hayes — both on a professional and a personal level.

Running NIS’ Camp Pendleton office as the “HSIC” (Head Secretary in Charge), Mary Jo was shown to have keenly absorbed over the years how the Special Agents (namely, Mike Franks) think. She has developed a second sense about when a witness or POI will be brought back in for questioning, and how to keep opposing parties from sharing the same waiting area air. We saw her labor to impart a fraction of that wisdom on a new secretary, with less help than she would have liked/hoped from her current underling. Mary Jo knows that the promise of free food will lure anyone to a dry sales pitch on profiling. And at episode’s end, we saw how her strong opinion on a thing can trickle up to Franks, and then down to the rest of the team — whether she knows it or not.

This week on CBS‘ NCIS: Origins, viewers got to know a lot more about Field Operation Support Officer Mary Jo Hayes — both on a professional and a personal level.

On a personal level… this week’s episode was set in motion by Mary Jo being served divorce papers, from the husband she’s been estranged from so long, the likes of Lala and Vera assumed the marriage was dissolved years ago. A flashback to a younger Mary Jo and Marcus showed them in a warm, if slightly melancholy, hug. When Mary Jo came to believe that Marcus was seeking “half” of everything she had in the divorce, she confronted him. Turns out, it was just a misunderstanding caused by a sus lawyer. During that face to face, Mary Jo made mention of their house, which Marcus had moved out of because it “haunted” him.

At episode’s end, we revisited that hug flashback once more, and realized that Mary Jo was holding between them a knit baby bonnet. They had lost a daughter, named Georgia. Mary Jo wanted to never forget what almost was, so Marcus cued her to write Georgia’s name on the wall of their home.

Cut back to 1991, where Mary Jo pushes aside some boxes on that wall to reveal there wound up being four names, four lost souls, in all: Georgia, Isaiah, Dawn, and Marcus Jr.

Here is what NCIS: Origins‘ Tyla Abercrumbie shared with TVLine about the assorted reveals in “To Have and to Hold.”

TVLINE | There were four names on that wall. What was your reaction when you read through that closing part of the script for the first time?
It was definitely a shocker because I thought, just as a woman, “What must that be like to try to bring four lives into the world, and it be unsuccessful?” Watching that, seeing her writing the names on the wall to “not forget,” was very moving.

You know when you have a moment where you’re just a little bit quiet, because you’ve got to let it all land…? I remember feeling that when we did the first read-through. For me, it was like, “Wow, this is really going to touch a lot of women, and a lot of families that have lost [pregnancies].”

One of the things I asked, that I needed to be clear on is, that when women have a baby that gets to like five or six months [in utero], they usually have to have that child, through childbirth, which makes that thought even more unsettling, that you would get this far and still it’s unsuccessful. It was very hard, and very moving, and it was an emotional scene. It was very emotional.

TVLINE | Talk about the casting of Mary Jo’s husband.
His name is Guy Lockard (Chicago Med). Guy is a really amazing young man to work with. A gentleman, I should say. I mean, he’s a young man, too — if he ever heard this, he’d be like, “Why did you throw the ‘young’ away?” — but he’s a wonderful, wonderful actor, out of New York. He was very emotionally available and willing to surrender and be in that backstory with Mary Jo, which is really beautiful when you’ve just met someone. He did a wonderful job. I loved working with Guy.

TVLINE | The other part of the closing act was also powerful, because you saw the “ripple effect” of Mary Jo expressing her point of view to Franks, about how the case wasn’t in fact over. He relays it along, using a lot of her words, and it trickles down, and you later see Randy saying, “I was really inspired by what Franks said!” That, coupled with the early scene where Mary Jo knows Franks won’t want the husband crossing paths with the people his wife swindled, really showed how she has her fingers on the pulse of this operation.
Absolutely. It shows how important she is to the dynamic and that you don’t necessarily have to hear her saying it. You see how important she is to others, that what she says matters. She has the ability to penetrate the “wall” of Franks, and he gives that to his agents, and his agents take that out into whatever they do. You see how in life, really, we’re consistently being inspired by people who don’t even know they’ve inspired us. In the world of Origins, Mary Jo doesn’t know that he says that to the agents. Therefore, that person’s voice is constantly being given and serving others without them ever even knowing how many people they’ve touched.

TVLINE | And by nudging them to hunt down the missing money, Mary Jo “saved some lives” in her own way.
She saved some lives, she helped them rebuild — which she clearly had to do. It also helped her. Don’t forget how important living their stories, hearing and typing up their stories, helped her with moving forward, as well. We’re consistently giving to each other. Just as in life, we don’t know who we’re touching and what makes inspiration for each other.

TVLINE | Lastly, what are you hearing about the first season finale? How are we going to be feeling at 10:55 pm that night?
You’re going to feel good. You’re going to feel good because you will be like, “I had 18 episodes of a show that I thought I was going to know [how it goes], and it turns out I don’t know anything.” That’s how you’re going to feel. And as a TV watcher myself, there’s nothing like leaning into something and going, “I’m so glad this show is on.”