‘NCIS’: Sean Murray Says Exploring McGee’s Characters ‘Is the Most Fun I’ve Had on an Episode in Quite a While’

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS Season 23 Episode 6 “Page-Turner.”]

It took nearly 20 years, but NCIS finally does a deep dive into McGee’s (Sean Murray) books, under the pen name Thom E. Gemcity, in the latest episode. And the Deep Six characters? They’re fun!

The actors take on dual roles, as both their regular characters and those in his pages (so Katrina Law‘s Knight is Knightshade, Wilmer Valderrama‘s Torres is Soares, Gary Cole‘s Parker is Parkman, Brian Dietzen‘s Jimmy Palmer is Pimmy Jalmer, and Diona Reasonover‘s Kasie is the KC-3000). And McGee himself is McGregor, and it’s his voice in the agent’s head when he fights to free himself at the end — not from his captor, who just wants answers about her missing son, but from the case’s killer. The two are connected, with her son, the pilot who died in a test that the killer (of the son’s best friend) covered up.

Then, at the end of the episode, Palmer reveals to Kasie that he got the original notes from the autopsy on Parker’s mother, and her injuries were not consistent with a car crash. He can’t keep this from Parker any longer.

Below, Sean Murray discusses bringing McGee’s Deep Six characters to life, that ending about Parker, and what’s ahead.

Talk about filming this episode and working with the cast as these different characters, who are also characters from McGee’s book and therefore an extension of his mind.

Sean Murray: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. We got this script, “Page-Turner,” and I was so excited about the script from right there. I knew it was going to be kind of something special and different for us, which is fun, especially when you’ve been going 22-plus years. It’s cool to have an episode that’s just very different for us. McGee has been a writer for many years. He’s had his writing alias, Thom E. Gemcity, puts out his Deep Six novels, and he likes to base his book characters around a little bit of the people. You got his Pimmy Jalmer, you got the Rick Soares. But this episode, it was a lot of fun. Marc Roskin directed it, and it was challenging, too.

Bill Inoshita/CBS

It was very different for us. Almost none of our usual is there, and it’s so much fun for me to see my fellow guys and gals playing different versions of these characters from McGee’s book. It was so much fun. I mean, Wilmer as Rick Soares, the sensitive type, it is just great. Katrina doing her badass superhero, Gary as the sort of somewhat Ducky-like professor. It was so much fun. It’s funny, you do the rounds and you promote episodes and stuff, and last of times, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, it was a great episode.” This was a special one for us. Everyone checked in, had a lot of fun. It was a lot of hard work, too. We had a lot of different sets and a lot of technical shooting challenges for us as well. But I can’t wait for everyone to see this one. I really, really can’t.

And you pulled double duty at one point, as McGee and McGregor as well.

That’s right, yeah. We’ve got certain people playing multiple parts. We get to see a little of what McGee might want to be in one of his books. It was funny when we were filming that, too — because we’ve got McGee and I also played McGregor, which is kind of an alter ego of McGee, I just remember we’re filming on set, and we’ve got one person who’s a double for me dressed as McGee. Basically, I looked up and there were three of me at one point while we were filming, and it was pretty cool. I’ve been doing this a long time, and this is the most fun I’ve had on an episode in quite a while, to be honest with you. And everyone else, too, Gary, Wilmer, Katrina, Brian, loved doing these sort of different characters for them. I think that’s so much fun, especially when you’ve got a bunch that you’ve seen for a while. It’s cool to see something different.

I was going to say McGregor was obviously far from who McGee was when he first came up with him, but it feels like McGee’s getting closer and closer to him in his own McGee way over the years, right?

Yeah. Well, I think McGee’s always trying to grow, and I think McGregor is a version of him that’s a little more proactive about what’s going on and stuff. And I think that’s something that McGee has always wanted, kind of pushed for and always been after. Even over the years, he’s gotten so much better at what he does. I think he’s always pushing to do that thing. And I don’t know if he’ll quite ever be the cool McGregor guy, but hey, we can all wish.

I mean, I think he’s much closer to it than anyone would’ve thought when we first met him. No one would’ve thought that McGee would be who he is right now.

Oh, no, 100%. I totally agree with you. I talk about this sometimes, the character’s grown a lot over the years, and a question I’ll get sometimes is, you’ve been doing one gig, one character for 22, 23 years, do you get bored with it, et cetera, et cetera. But I’ve never ever really had that because we’ve always been kind of moving in a forward momentum in terms of the character. I said early on we kind of had an agreement regarding the character, which was, I think when McGee started, it was rookie, rookie, rookie, all about the rookie. And part of my thing, and luckily they were very into this, too, was that he would grow. It wasn’t going to be baby Maggie Simpson, every week. you just revert to the age and thing you are, and there’s never any growth. We always wanted to have him growing.

So, yeah, the character has changed so much. Sometimes on social media, I’ll see some old clips from some old shows and stuff, and I’m just like, “What is that? What is that?” I mean, it is great, and it totally worked at the time. It’s been a really cool progression. But there are definitely times when I look at some of those old shows every once and I’m like, “God, boy, McGee has changed.”

At the end of the episode, Palmer and Kasie decide they can’t keep what they’ve learned about Parker’s mother from him anymore. It sounds like then McGee is going to become privy to what’s going on, the rest of the team might be involved. What can you tease about what’s coming up next there?

We’re going to learn more about Parker and Lily and his past and some secrets. We’re going to learn more about that in the next couple weeks of shows, and that’s something that is going to kind of continue a little bit through this year, which I’m a big fan of. I love it. I love the Parker stuff. I love when our characters have things going on that we don’t know about yet that we slowly learn about that reveal themselves.

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I’m really happy with this year so far in terms of our stories and what we’re coming up with, and it’s really good. It feels really good this year. There’s this sort of renewed feeling this year. We’re all kind of re-energized, and I think it’s a good machine right now. And like I said before, lots of times you do the rounds and you’ll be with the press and you say, “Oh, this is great,” and everything. This is like honest to God excitement about this stuff, and we have some super cool things coming up in the future, too. We’re actually getting ready to film an episode — we’ve got a lot going on with different characters, but in terms of say, McGee, we’ve got an episode coming up that I’m really looking forward to. This will actually be really fun for the longtime fans, too. We get some big, big, unexpected family news from McGee’s side of things, so that’s going to be a good one.

Unexpected can be good or bad, though.

Agreed. Good or bad, but exciting nonetheless.

We just had that crossover, which was so good. And McGee and Vera (Roma Maffia) together, Vera still hating McGee…

Oh my God, I loved seeing Roma, and by the way, it was so much fun to have her there. It was so good to see her again. We had a lot of fun.

We also had that really nice moment when Vera tells McGee that Gibbs (Mark Harmon) is proud of him. How much did that mean to McGee to hear that?

Oh, it meant everything. Gibbs is it for McGee. He’s the guy that taught him everything, and McGee is always questioning himself. He’s never quite comfortable with things. He’s always worrying he’s not doing enough or doing the right thing. And so just to hear that, to hear how important Gibbs feels about McGee is great. It’s great, especially with the boss man up in Alaska.

It was interesting to shoot that scene where we’re looking at the video, too, because obviously the way we shoot things, I’m looking at a blue screen with nothing on it yet, but when it came together, I thought I did pretty well, and I actually was really, really happy with the way that crossover worked because lots of times they’ll just, as you know, get a couple of shows on a franchise, they send some characters to the other shows, whatever. This was cool. I think it was handled really nicely. And David J. North and Gina [Lucita Monreal], who are the showrunners over on Origins, good friends of mine, Steve Binder, everyone came together and I think this — we didn’t really know. You get the script, but you never really know how everything’s going to work out, especially when you have two different companies shooting something that’s going to work as one story. But I think everyone came together. I think it was done the right way. I think it was really nice. And it was great to see Mark, too.

And Episode 500 is coming up. Congratulations!

Thank you.

Have you heard any rumblings at all about what it’s going to be about?

Oh, yeah. I hate to be a dopey actor teasing their stuff, but we’ve got some really good stuff coming up. We really do. Yeah, the 500th, which we’re gearing up to shoot now, is going to be pretty bitching. I know I’ve teased some family news with McGee. I also think we may see some people that we haven’t seen for a long time in the world of NCIS, who are a big part of the NCIS world. We got that to look forward. Now I’m thinking about the plot of 500 and it’s so good. I’m sounding so dorky here. I’m very happy with our show right now. I’m very excited with where we are.

NCIS, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS