NCIS on M6: ‘It’s a miracle’… Sean Murray (McGee) recalls the reasons for this success

This Saturday, June 1, M6 will air NCIS Season 21 Episode 7 titledconspiracy“. A very special new opus as it represents the 1000th episode of the franchise, including spin-offs.

With the parent series only accounting for 467 of those 1,000 episodes, it shouldn’t take long to pass the fateful 500-episode mark, with the fiction being renewed for a 22nd season a few weeks ago.

That’s why NCIS doesn’t have an ending, which managed to survive despite the departure of many key players. Only Sean Murray and Brian Dietzen, who play McGee and Palmer respectively, remain from the original cast.

A series with a record duration

During the broadcast of this special episode in the United States, our colleagues variety spoke to some of the cast members of NCIS to get their thoughts on the reasons behind the detective series’ longevity.

And one thing’s for sure, when Sean Murray joined the series in season one, he didn’t expect to still be around twenty years later. “In the world of soap operas, the fact that a script has been picked up for a pilot is a miracle“, he explained.

“When this pilot becomes a series, it’s a miracle. Going through a full season is a miracle! To last four or five years is incredible and rare. It is incredible to last 21 years. The series will not last that long.”

According to the actor, even the NCIS offices are falling apart. “I often joke that the walls separating our offices come down on set. They are literally held together by rubber bands.”

Constantly evolving characters

For McGee, the evolution of characters over the years and episodes can also explain why NCIS is still the flagship series in the American audiovisual landscape today.

“My character was able to develop as the series progressedSean Murray confided. “That’s why I never felt bored. Instead of trying to tell the same stories and having these characters be stuck at a certain age, we grew up in the show.”

“We have grown old. We have evolved. So we could have the same characters but tell different stories because we didn’t lock them in time where they couldn’t age. We grew old, had children, had relationships, broke up, died.”

Catch two new episodes of NCIS Season 21 this Saturday, June 1, from 9.10pm on M6.