NCIS Actress Never Took Sick Leave After Her Co-Star’s Harsh Advice

Throughout its impressive TV run of more than twenty years, the CBS police procedural NCIS repeatedly proved that its biggest figure to-date, already retired Supervisory Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, had always been a strict boss to deal with, but his actor seemingly turned out to be just as tough as his character.

Though the show officially said goodbye to Gibbs back in season 19 when he decided to enjoy his retirement in Alaska, all the legends about him or his actor Mark Harmon aren’t going anywhere anytime soon as one harsh behind-the-scenes detail has recently been revealed by Harmon’s no less famous co-star.

During one of the Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch reunions that brought Timothy McGee’s Sean Murray back together with Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David’s actors Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo, the latter opened up about her tough conversation with Harmon that eventually worked wonders with her health condition.

According to de Pablo, she once almost took a sick leave while shooting NCIS season 3, but was still forced to come to the set where Mark Harmon scolded her for not considering the shooting schedule when deciding to take a day off. The actress revealed that even her doctor had ordered her to stay home, so she had to completely ignore everything he had initially said.

The actress clarified that, though Harmon was initially kind to her while telling her about the actors’ strict rules on set, he still seemed pretty severe about the whole matter.

Ironically, Cote de Pablo’s body seemingly took the threat way too seriously as, according to her, she never got ill since then.

The actress admitted that “mentally, it just did a trick on you. And when you think about it, you know, anyone can do a job, better, worse, whatever. But no one can play McGee, no one can play DiNozzo. No one can play any of the characters. So you really had to be there, and that’s a lot of pressure.”