Scott Wolf Looks Back on ‘NCIS,’ Working With Mark Harmon & His ‘Incredible’ Arc
Nowadays, Scott Wolf is busy starring in Doc, where his character saves lives. But 13 years ago, he played the guy who was taking lives in a three-episode arc on NCIS.
In the series, Wolf played Jonathan Cole, a member of the special ops team, the Phantom Eight, in Season 9 Episodes 1 “Nature of the Best,” 12 “Housekeeping,” and 24 “Till Death Do Us Part.” He was a killer — and he tried to add Tony (Michael Weatherly) to his list of victims, but failed — but he ended up sacrificing himself to save members of the team when a bomb was delivered to the Navy Yard in the Season 9 finale.
Cliff Lipson/CBS
“NCIS was great. Mark Harmon, salt of the Earth, generous, really made me feel welcome there. They told a very cool story with my character. Oftentimes when you come in and play a character like I did — he was a villain, he was like this rogue ex-Navy Seal who wanted to shoot people and harm people. But they wound up sort of redeeming him in the end,” Wolf notes to TV Insider.
He recalls Cole and Gibbs’ (Harmon) argument about who would defuse the bomb: “In the end, time’s running out, and he has this moment with Mark Harmon where he’s like, ‘You got to get out,’ and he’s like, ‘No, no, no, I’m staying.’ And he smiles, and he’s literally martyring himself. He’s going to die to save people. And for a show like that that doesn’t do that with characters very often, it’s kind of incredible.”
Wolf has starred in numerous shows, notably Party of Five, Everwood, and Nancy Drew. However, “I did three episodes, I don’t even know how long ago, and I might get stopped for that in airports as much as anything else,” he reveals. “It’s a very popular show, obviously. But there was something about the fact that they made a little arc out of that character, and he wasn’t a one-off, shoot people and go away [character].”
What he does recall is having to reshoot the first scene in which he had to fire a gun (after safety checks). As the character, “I’m an ex-Navy Seal. I’ve shot thousands and thousands of rounds, and so I need to shoot two people, and they shot it in super slow motion, and as I was coming out from behind the wall, they shot it, and the gun went off, and it was a lot,” Wolf shares. It was late on a Friday night, and everyone watched it back on the monitor, and at first, he thought, “Oh, this actually looks really cool. I look like sort of Navy Seal-ish. I might’ve been voted least likely to be a Navy Seal in high school.” But he reacted after firing the gun “because it was extremely loud, and I hadn’t fired the gun before,” and so he wasn’t surprised when after the weekend, the director had him reshoot the scene.
“I was like, yeah, I figured that we might be having this conversation,” Wolf says. “So the shot that’s in the show, I had a chance to kind of compose myself to know that this thing was going to explode next to my face and not look like someone who had never fired a gun before.”
Do you remember Scott Wolf’s arc on NCIS? What did you think of it when you first watched? Let us know in the comments section below.
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C
Scott was great. I was sorry his character died in the explosion as it would have been nice to see his character be redeemed even more.
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R
I like his character. I think it was his wonderful smile
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B
Thought that was him when I saw the trailer for doc....it was a great character on ncis and he played it really well
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R
I love Scott he’s an amazing actor and person
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G
I found myself hoping he'd get the bomb defused and get out of there alive! He definitely became the hero. He played his part very well, he should play more bad guy scenes.
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G
I loved the way he portrayed a man trained as a soldier in Special Ops. He portrayed Cole as a man who really thought he was a Patriot. He was very mission oriented. There was a scene where he was told to stand down and leave because NCIS and Gibbs were closing in. He said he couldn't, he had to finish his mission. While he did things that were not legal and he killed many people, he did show true heroism in the end.
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T
1 of the show's most famous cliffhanger finales. 🙂
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C
I really enjoyed his work on NCIS. I saw his last episode recently. Now I plan to go back and watch the 3 episodes he did together. Great character!
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B
When I saw this picture of him I remembered he was on NCIS. I wish that had redeemed himself and become one of the agents. He is very good at his craft.
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P
He was great for the role! You really disliked him of course, but then admired his bravery at the end. Good actor, great role, nice arc!
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P
I really liked it and I definitely think he was a great actor because whether he’s playing bad or good he owned it again. I really enjoyed that episode.