TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Mr. Harmon's bio
• Q & A with Mr. Harmon

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Pleased to welcome prime time TV fixture Mark Harmon to this program. His terrific career includes film and television shows like "St. Elsewhere," "Chicago Hope", and the brilliant mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon." His latest hit show is the CBS military drama "NCIS." The show ends its second season on May 24th. Here now a scene from "NCIS."

Leroy Gibbs: Where's the device?

Man: Oh, I almost forgot. I lied. There is none.

Tavis: Love that show. Mark Harmon, nice to meet you.

Mark Harmon: Tavis, my pleasure.

Tavis: I love the show, watch it, and thank you. Love the show, watch it, and didn't know until I started preparing for this show what "NCIS" actually stood for.

Harmon: You and me both. Ha ha ha!

Tavis: OK, Naval Criminal Investigative Service. And I hear also, which I didn't know, it's a real unit.

Harmon: Oh, yeah. They've been around since World War II.

Tavis: Yeah?

Harmon: And I didn't--you know, when Don Bellisario sent me the script, I didn't know what it meant, either, and he basically informed me about this agency that has been around that long, uh, 1,200 strong, 18% female. Their jurisdiction is the world, do a very, very difficult job, and since 9/11, they're really at the very tip point of counterterrorism work in the world, so I'm glad someone's out there trying to do that job, but I'm glad it's not me for real.

Tavis: yeah. Let me ask you to that very point, um, how the show is received by the department that actually does the work that you do on television every week?

Harmon: You know, Tavis, I don't really know. I think, as always, the show's gotta be great for their employment and for getting people who now know about that agency and want young people to come and be part of that-...which I know that's all gone up for them--um, but I gotta think that part of this agency worked very well for years with no one knowing who they are, and for the field agent, that's important, so maybe there's someone somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan interviewing someone or doing some bad work there or hard work there, and this show does not make it easy for them, I would assume.

Tavis: Yeah. TV hours are long hours. I mean, I always feel sorry for guys like you. I mean, you're doing OK, and maybe I shouldn't feel sorry for you, but those TV hours are like long hours, and I can only imagine that's made even more difficult by the kind of language and terminology you guys have to use on a show like "NCIS."

Harmon: Well, you know, it's a muscle. You know, I wish I knew how to do this when I was in college. It would make a college a little more easy, but the truth is, you know, I don't complain about the hours. We all work real hard at what we do, and I've worked a long time to try to get busy, and I've worked just as hard on the shows that no one's watching, you know? And the truth is people are watching this show, which makes me feel good, and that's a reward, so the idea of the hour days that we work or to complain or even for one moment say, you know, there's not 20 guys behind me that'd like that job--I always try to keep that in perspective.

Tavis: You mentioned college, and I've always been fascinated by the fact that, if I am to believe you--and I have no reason to disbelieve you, Mr. Harmon--but if I'm to believe you, while your father, Tom Harmon, was a college star...

Harmon: Yes, sir.

Tavis: And while your mother was an actress, you went on to play football and obviously to be an actor. But if I'm to believe you, your parents didn't push you in either one of those things, and yet you took what both had accomplished and combined them.

Harmon: Well, you know, Tavis, life doesn't read like a resume, ya know? And the truth of the matter is I didn't know what I was gonna do. I was supposed to go to law school, you know. I played football because I loved the game. It was the first sport of the season. I was actually more successful as a baseball player when I was younger than at football, and yet, as a kid, you know, when I went to spend time with my dad, he was broadcasting, usually at the Coliseum, and I would go and I'd run to that press gate early and I'd look down that new fresh field, and the smell of it, I still remember it, and I'd look at that tunnel and say, "Wow, someday, wouldn't it be something coming out of that thing as a player?" And when I was 18, my first game there was in front of 92,000 people starin' at that tunnel and for me, it was a dream, and it was something that I always wanted to do. Everybody used to look at my dad and say, "Well, you just took a football and you put it right in his hands," and he never did. I mean, the kid at the park, when I was 6, told me he won the Heisman trophy. That's the kind of house I grew up in.

Tavis: That's how you learned.

Harmon: My mom was out of the business by the time I was born. She married my dad, had children, and that was the end of it for her. She did 33 features and had quite a career. It looks like I followed both of them, but not intentionally.

Tavis: Yeah. This won't rank as one of my better questions, but I'm fascinated. I know Jim Brown rather well. I think one of the greatest to ever play the game, probably the best, certainly, running back, and Jim is just one of any number of persons who come from the world of football who went into the acting thing as well, not unlike yourself. Tell me, um, whether or not there are parallels. I'm just trying to figure out how an athlete jumps into the acting business, and there are a number who've done that.

Harmon: Yeah, I guess. I always kind of went into it thinking, "I want to stay for a while," you know, and I recognized right away that it's not something you just go into and all of a sudden say, "Hey, I can do this well, just like I used to carry a football," you know? Um, the longevity thing has always appealed to me and to do that, I think it takes choice and it takes being resilient and it takes a lot of things that have nothing to do with being an athlete. At the same time, there's a team concept to it that I totally get, and I'm a team guy. I've always been a team guy. This show is about a team and all facets of it. And this is a business sometimes that runs on, you know, who's number one on the call sheet and whose trailer is bigger and all that kind of stuff. I don't care about any of that. I care about the work part of it and that's why I'm doing it and that's why I like doing it and that's why I continue to get up in the morning and enjoy driving to a job I truly care about.

Tavis: I read a funny story about your first acting gig. All I'm gonna say is go-rilla.

Harmon: Yeah. I was a gorilla.

Tavis: I'll let you tell the story.

Harmon: Well, I got a call from a producer friend who was doing this show and he said this guy wasn't gonna show up and could you come down for 2 days, $220? And I said, "Absolutely," and I went down there. You never saw who I was. I was a guy who answered the door at the end of the episode. They opened the door and I said, "Hi, my name's Hairy King Kong. Which way is the Empire State Building?" That was my first line, but you know what? It got me on a set for 2 days and I got to see all this and stand there and get in the director's booth and watch this producer work, and I liked it. I liked it a lot, and so that was important to me.

Tavis: And then, talk about some guys who have all the luck, your first real TV opportunity, TV movie, you get an Emmy nomination for it your first time out the gate!

Harmon: Tavis, that was the first time I played a character that had a name. I mean, really...

Tavis: That's my point, Mark. You had a name, it's your first time, and you get a nomination.

Harmon: Yeah, because if you need a guy to be the guy next door or the farmer or the kid who takes his shirt off and kisses the pretty girl, that was me. I got a lot of those roles and then--and I went to read for just to play a jeep driver in a miniseries called "Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years," and I was walking out and the casting director said, "Hey, you know, we've been having trouble looking and casting this part. Can you take a look at this?" It was cold reading, it was 7 pages, and big monologues and it was a guy, a Marine who'd lost his leg during Iwo Jima and he was trying to get courage to come home to meet his family, and it was basically a small scene with Jane Alexander who played Eleanor Roosevelt. Just came and sat on his bed in this field hospital, and there was just that. And I got it and worked one day and I got nominated. But the other part of it is really, like, watching that happen and not understanding why it happened, which I didn't. I mean, to me, it was great because all of a sudden, I had an opportunity to get into meetings or at least meet people that I never could have ever met before, and at the same time, I honestly didn't quite understand why I was there or why all the fuss, you know? But for me, it was about opportunity and it's all about opportunity and taking advantage of it.

Tavis: Um, OK, here's silly question number 2 and you can slap me for this one, but I just have to ask this because as one--speaking of being the guy that takes off his shirt and gets to kiss the pretty girl...

Harmon: Sometimes they weren't so pretty.

Tavis: OK, the one you're married to is and I grew up watching her, like a lot of people did, so how cool is it to be married to Pam Dawber?

Harmon: Well, it's cool because, you know what, Tavis? I'm a lucky guy. I'm a lucky guy, and I look at it like I had to kiss a lot of frogs to get there. That's how it was. Because Pam's not Mindy. I guarantee you, she's not Mindy. You know, she's from the Midwest. She's rock solid. We've been married 19 years, and 2 wonderful children, and I'm just a lucky guy. I mean, I never thought I'd be married to an actress. Ever. I mean, shoot me right in the head if I was gonna ever date an actress again when I met her. But she's not an actress--

Tavis: Well, you are--you know the rub against being married to another thespian. So what's the secret?

Harmon: Well, the secret...part of the secret, I think, for us is not talking about it, to be honest with you. Keeping it away from the questions, you know? The other part of it is her career was going wherever it was going before I met her, and so was mine. And if you were to give us 10 scripts, and say, "You know what? We'd like you both to do all these 10 scripts," chances are, 10 out of 10, we wouldn't--the same stuff doesn't appeal to either of us.

Tavis: Have you guys ever done anything together?

Harmon: Yeah, we've done plays, and we did one small movie together. And it was hard. But we both recognized it was hard. And just, like, little stuff, personal stuff like a look. A look, and she'll go, "What?" and I go, you know, "Whoa. Whoa." That kind of stuff, you know? But the truth is she's a great mom and a great lady, and I truly admire her. You know, it's fortunate, in this business especially.

Tavis: So, you've got 2 kids.

Harmon: Yes.

Tavis: So, back to where we started this conversation, your mom and dad did 2 things. You ended up doing what both of them did. So what are your kids going to do, you think?

Harmon: Right now, if I had to say where they were gonna be, you know, God only knows.

Tavis: It changes every day, huh?

Harmon: Yeah, it does. And I'm just--I think both of us are on the same side of that, which is just trying hard to let them be kids, you know? And let them have somewhat of a regular upbringing, not a Hollywood upbringing. They have certain advantages that Pam didn't have, I didn't have. At the same time, you know, we're just trying to do a good job of parenting at the moment, and that's a full- time occupation.

Tavis: Did growing up in the shadow of 2 people who had established themselves in this sort of celebrity world teach you things early on that you knew you didn't wanna do or didn't wanna expose your kids to if, in fact, you ever got to that point?

Harmon: You know what? I think there's all kinds of lessons. There's lessons where people say, "Don't do that." And you don't do it. And there's lessons where they do do it, and you see it, and you go, "I'm not gonna do that." But you gotta realize that it changes with you. You know? And I think--I don't know what good parenting is. I just know instinctively what I think is right or what we think is right. And it's a different kind of world and these kids have different opportunities and certainly different choices, and it's a full-time occupation.

Tavis: All right. Silly question number 3, and I promise this is the last one. I'll let you go.

Harmon: These are pretty good, though.

Tavis: Well, you know, you actually have gotten somebody else's share of silly questions, so please forgive me for that. But this last one I have to ask. I just wanna know who it was--who was it that decided the name of your character on this TV show--Leroy Jethro Gibbs. As I hear that, you got some brother up in there with Leroy, some country white boy with Jethro, and Gibbs--what is this, the Bee Gees or something? Who put that name together?

Harmon: You know what, Tavis? Sometimes--I just got this script, and they said this is from Don Bellisario, and there was a note on the front of it. And I got to page 4, and it said the character's name is Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and I stopped. It stopped me. Sometimes it's just in a name. Sometimes you go, "Wow, I like that name." And there was a moment where that name changed. Next script I read, that name was gone. It was something else. I went, "Wait a minute, what happened to the name?" And he went, "You liked that name?" I said, "I loved that name." He said, "It was my dad's best friend growing up in Pennsylvania." I said, "Great." So that's how it started and that's where it is.

Tavis: Well, I'm not sure Leroy Jethro Gibbs goes together, but the show works awfully well, the ensemble cast.

Harmon: So does this one, by the way.

Tavis: Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Nice to meet you.

Harmon: My pleasure.

Tavis: "NCIS," the season finale May 24. Check it out. That's our show for tonight. A reminder, you can catch me back on public radio this weekend and every weekend on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A., thanks for watching, and, as always, keep the faith.