‘NCIS’: Sean Murray Teases Easter Eggs in Franchise’s 1000th Episode
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“Reaching 1,000 episodes for the franchise was insane, and, by the way, I’m pointing out that almost 500 of those are just us,” says NCIS star Sean Murray ahead of that milestone. “I just have to throw that out there because I’m proud of that.”
That episode airs on the mothership on April 15, and Murray has been around for most of the ones to air on NCIS, having recurred in Season 1 and becoming a series regular in Season 2. So he has been there for a lot, including some necessary changes on set.
“It’s unreal. We had a lot of people asking what it was like, and I kept kind of shaking my head because it’s really unfathomable,” he tells TV Insider. “Shows are not supposed to go 21 years. It’s a miracle to get picked up. It’s a miracle to go past one year. It’s a bloody miracle. Sorry, I’m Australian, so I say bloody a lot. It’s a real miracle if you go five years. It’s an insane thing. And for a television show to go 21 years… We have had to rebuild our permanent sets because the partitions and stuff have fallen apart because they’ve been there for so long. And I’m not even joking with you. Chairs that were brand new when we started the series, these beautiful $1000 conference room chairs are falling apart like crazy because we’re in year 21, so we’re having to replace a lot of that stuff.”
Murray’s hesitant to share too much about the 1,000th episode itself (we already know Hawai’i‘s Vanessa Lachey and LA‘s Daniela Ruah will appear) but promises that both longtime and newer fans will enjoy it.
“My favorite thing of what we’ve done in the 1,000th episode is we have got little Easter eggs and things hidden all through the episode—and not even just hidden. We call back to a lot of things, but it’s a little hard to describe,” he admits. “It’s a great show for the people that are just tuning in for the first time or new fans. For the people that have been with us for a long time, it’s really something special because you’re going to see, like I said, Easter eggs of things. You’re going to see things that tip-off to old episodes, famous episodes that we did. Little moments. We have characters come back that we haven’t seen in a very long time.”
For example, like it was very much part of the first episode of the series, “Yankee White,” he continues, “Air Force One is very involved in that as are characters from that episode and from our past there. It’s going to be a cool one.” One such character from that episode is Fornell, played by Joe Spano, who we also know is back for the 1,000th episode, thanks to photos Murray shared on Instagram.
While there are those aforementioned characters from other NCIS shows appearing in the 1,000th episode, don’t expect a crossover outside of that, necessarily. (Ruah directed an episode, which Murray loved. “I know that she’d been doing a lot on LA, so it seems like a natural thing for that to happen,” he shares.)
With the shortened season, “we really want to make the most of our 10 episodes as possible, and so we’ve really turned a lot of it inward, and it’s even more character-focused,” explains Murray. “We really want to just buckle down and make it about our team there.”
But he’s not ruling it out for the future. “We like to do crossovers and do that stuff, and it’s a lot of fun. We know when the show continues, if the show continues, that that stuff will happen and everyone plays within the franchise,” he says.
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And those crossovers are fun! After all, with the three-show event in January 2023, Murray reunited with LA‘s Chris O’Donnell (G. Callen) and LL COOL J (Sam) after he worked with them in the two-part backdoor pilot, “Legend,” during NCIS Season 6 in 2009.
“I will never forget doing that interrogation scene with Chris and Todd. That was so much fun because I’m the one in there usually grilling everyone, so I was on the other side of the table, and that was a lot of fun, having those guys there,” Murray shares. “I remember when they did the spinoff when we were in year 6. It’s wild. So to see the success that they had and the way that that show went was really cool. As much as it’s inside the franchise and we share names, the shows were very different, too. I know they didn’t want a carbon copy of NCIS, even though they share the name. It was a different kind of show, but being able to have those characters over with us was really fun.”
What are you hoping to see in the franchise’s 1,000th episode? Let us know in the comments section, below.
NCIS, Mondays, 9/8c, CBS
