‘NCIS’ Star Gary Cole on Taking Over Gibbs’ Team as Agent Parker

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New guy Alden Parker (Gary Cole) had some giant shoes to fill when he took over in 2021 as head of the NCIS team from longtime leader Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon, who’d been with the series since the 2003 premiere). After a bumpy start with the agents, Parker won them over, but fans loved Cole — a familiar face with a long career in TV and films — from the start. We spoke with the actor about his character’s journey so far.

When Director Vance (Rocky Carroll) offered Parker the job, he hesitated. Why?

Gary Cole: He [wondered], “Is this where I really want to be?” The stakes couldn’t be higher. The [team is] on a perpetual stress train. Parker, by nature, is a loner. Out of instinct, he doesn’t trust anybody. But he’s got to make compromises and do two things: watch his back and trust other people with his life. At first, Parker was adversarial with everybody, but Vance gave him the benefit of the doubt. [Vance] is a trademark good leader, firm but fair, and that’s what Parker tries to be.

Parker bonded with his agents in “All Hands” (Season 19, Episode 11), when he led them in outsmarting and outfighting terrorists on a ship. It was the first time Parker called them “my team.” Why was this a game-changer?

The circumstances were so black and white. People’s lives were on the line. Being in charge, he was responsible for them. Before then, the team had reason to not necessarily have a lot of confidence or trust in him because Gibbs had been there so long that they were used to one thing, and Parker was not that. In this episode, he’s proving himself to the team. In real life, about two weeks before, I tore my meniscus. Whenever we weren’t shooting, I was sitting on an apple box with a giant bag of ice.

(Credit: Robert Voets/CBS via Getty Images )

How does Parker see the agents now?

Parker looks to get McGee’s [Sean Murray] take on the big picture, zeroing in on whoever they’re looking for, whatever they’re trying to solve. He knows that in Torres [Wilmer Valderrama] he’s got a guy that will go the distance, go undercover, do the dirty, badass work, and to some degree [so will] Knight [Katrina Law]. With Torres, he sees recklessness he’d rather wasn’t there. There is a concern that Torres is going to go off a cliff because he wants to do things that are extreme.

Parker is notorious for his many passions: international pastries, bird-watching, horticulture. Have you picked any of those up?

None of his hobbies interest me whatsoever. [Laughs] I like a good doughnut as much as the next guy, so maybe that’s the closest. [The hobbies are] a distraction from the job and maybe the inability to be somebody who’s more social or comfortable around people. He is a guy who can’t sit still. He’s not somebody who reflects a lot — until he doesn’t have a choice if something is weighing on him.

In “Thick as Thieves” (Season 19, Episode 15), fans were just as surprised as the team to learn Parker was in juvie! How does that relate to the agent we know?

He was on the other side, albeit in a juvenile crime, and got close to a path that would have, if not destroyed his life, really altered it. He chose the path of law enforcement, and he takes it very seriously. What makes the character interesting is stuff you don’t see on a frequent basis. It’s bubbling underneath.

(Credit: Sonja Flemming/CBS via Getty Images)

Speaking of bubbling underneath, we learned in “Bridges” (Season 20, Episode 11) that he never got over high school love Joy Aaronson (Rachel Ticotin). Let’s talk about the women in his life. His ex-wife, former FBI agent Vivian Kolchak (Teri Polo), helped him when he was framed for murder, and he had a fling with Sen. Constance Miller (Brigid Brannagh), but nothing sticks. Can Parker commit to a relationship?

If there’s a theme running through that, it’s reluctance. Maybe that traces back to the episode with his ex-partner that he wounded. That’s a significant piece that has something to do with his reluctance to be close to anyone, and certainly, with a woman in the most intimate way. It’s on the back burner.

Right. In “Old Wounds” (Season 20, Episode 14), we met his former FBI partner Jeremy Brighton (Michael Patrick Thornton), whom Parker had mistakenly shot and paralyzed. There was a scene where Brighton had Parker read aloud the letter Brighton had written him shortly after the incident. What was it like to play that?

It’s as emotional a scene as I’ve done in quite a long time, and I was able to do that in a more effective way than maybe I ever had — just because of life experience and working as an actor. I wanted Parker to get the letter and read it back to his partner, almost in anger at first, and then discover the turn [to forgiveness] that the letter makes almost as if it just kind of overtook him and he didn’t expect it. That’s what we wound up doing. It brought some closure to whatever Parker had been holding on to over that.

(Credit: Robert Voets/CBS)

Parker’s dad, Roman (Francis Xavier McCarthy), whom we met in “Birds of a Feather” (Season 19, Episode 21), has criticized his son for not joining the Navy and for divorcing Vivian. But Roman’s also helped on cases! How do you see their relationship?

We don’t know much about what went on when he was younger, but I think at one point he was yearning for his dad’s attention or approval. He loves his father, but it doesn’t come easy between the two of ’em. I liked the way those scenes were written, especially Parker trying to set him up in a new apartment and Roman finally relents and gives his son credit and tells him he’s proud of him. That means a lot. Parker was more exasperated with his father than anything else that ever happened on the show, which has a real-life feeling.

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Coming up in Season 21, Parker will pose as a surgeon in one episode. He’s previously impersonated a lawyer and psychiatrist, which seems risky for a federal agent.

Parker does have a gift for bulls–ttery, if that’s a word. He’s comfortable in that. He was introduced [to the series] as this wacko guy who was a lone wolf and hiding the fact that he was working for the FBI and closing in on the same person as NCIS. He will pose as somebody else to get what he wants.

NCIS Episode 1,000: Monday, April 15, 9/8c, CBS

This is an excerpt from TV Guide Magazine’s NCIS: Special Collector’s Edition issue. For more inside scoop on the long-running CBS franchise, pick up a copy of the issue available on newsstands and for order online at NCISMagazine.com.