{"id":2538,"date":"2025-04-08T13:30:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T13:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/?p=2538"},"modified":"2025-04-08T13:30:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T13:30:42","slug":"mark-harmon-knew-austin-stowell-would-play-young-leroy-gibbs-at-first-ncis-origins-audition-i-felt-the-room-jump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/?p=2538","title":{"rendered":"Mark Harmon knew Austin Stowell would play young Leroy Gibbs at first \u201cNCIS: Origins \u201daudition: \u2018I felt the room jump\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Despite \u2018heavy competition\u2019 for the role, Harmon knew Stowell was a star when he saw him.<\/p>\n

NCIS producer and star Mark Harmon knew he\u2019d found his young Leroy Jethro Gibbs the first moment he laid eyes on him.<\/p>\n

When Bridge of Spies star Austin Stowell walked in to audition for the prequel series NCIS: Origins, Harmon recalled that he \u201cfelt the room jump a little,\u201d even \u201cbefore he said anything.\u201d Harmon recently told PEOPLE about the search for the younger version of the character he played on the flagship series for 19 seasons. \u201cThere was heavy competition there,\u201d Harmon recalled. \u201cThere were a lot of good people. I would say that there were really few who drew the attention Austin did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harmon even remembered that Stowell \u201cwalked out and someone said, \u2018I\u2019ll just say it, that\u2019s a movie star.’\u201d<\/p>\n

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Harmon played Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a former Marine Corps sniper turned special agent and team commander for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), from 2003 to 2021. The long-running CBS procedural has already produced several spinoffs of varying degrees of success over the years, from NCIS: New Orleans, which Harmon co-produces, to NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: Sydney, and the recently canceled NCIS: Hawaii.<\/p>\n

A spinoff exploring the events that led Gibbs to his post at NCIS was announced in January, with Harmon on board to co-produce. After extensive speculation over who should play young Gibbs (exempting Sean Harmon, the actor\u2019s son, who previously played a younger version of Gibbs on NCIS but returned to Origins solely as an executive producer), Stowell was announced as the official pick in March.<\/p>\n

Related: The 25 essential NCIS episodes<\/p>\n

Discussing the kismet of Stowell\u2019s casting, Harmon remarked, \u201cI can say that about any role that was cast in this show, because they all came in one after another. We got everybody we wanted.\u201d In addition to the Gibbs character, NCIS: Origins reprises the character of Mike Franks, the Major Case Response Team leader and mentor figure to Gibbs.<\/p>\n

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Muse Watson played the elder Franks on the flagship series, while Kyle Schmid (Being Human, Big Sky) was cast as Origins\u2019 younger counterpart.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in September, NCIS writer and executive producer David J. North said the Origins team \u201cjust knew when Austin came in that he was Gibbs\u2026 He embodied it. His talent is limitless \u2014 his dedication to the role, studying Mark, studying the show \u2014 he has a similar leadership quality that Mark had on set that bleeds into Gibbs the character.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite \u2018heavy competition\u2019 for the role, Harmon knew Stowell was a star when he saw him. NCIS producer and star Mark Harmon knew he\u2019d found his young… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2540,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538\/revisions\/2540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}