‘NCIS: Origins’: Tyla Abercrumbie Teases Mary Jo’s Past Catching Up to Her

NCIS: Origins returns from a brief hiatus with a new episode on Monday, March 24, and we’re finally going to learn more about Mary Jo (Tyla Abercrumbie)!

In “To Have and to Hold,” the team works the case of an investment advisor found dead shortly after her release from prison. Plus, Mary Jo is left reeling by an unexpected development in her personal life. Below, Abercrumbie previews the episode and discusses how the person who helps everyone else does when she’s the one who needs to lean on someone.

Mary Jo is left reeling by an unexpected development in her personal life. What can you tease?

Tyla Abercrumbie: When you least expect it, the things you feel are safely tucked away in your past can suddenly just catch up with you, and it catches up with Mary Jo.

How does she handle that?

Well, initially, I think she tries to handle it the way she handles everything she compartmentalizes. She feels very much like, focus, you can get through this and everything’s okay, but sometimes you realize that you can’t do it all by yourself and you might have to turn to some friends just to help you through your emotional journey.

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Speaking of that, because she does so much for everyone and we really see that in this episode on and off the clock, she is helping every single person that she crosses paths with. So who does she lean on?

When we were talking — [showrunners] Gina [Lucita Monreal] and David [J. North] were wonderfully collaborative with this character in particular, Mary Jo —one of the things I really wanted and I asked for was that I wanted to see a reflection of myself in my friends and who I would go to. And so even though at the dinner party you see all of these friends and she’s helping them, I wanted to build in that this is her community outside of work. Because I believe we do have two communities. We do have our work community and we have our family. I think Mary Jo leans on that community at home, but she can also — and we find out in this episode that maybe she didn’t know it — lean on her coworkers like Vera [Diany Rodriguez] and Lala [Mariel Molino].

Yeah, I love that scene at the bar with the three of them.

Me too! It was really enjoyable because I don’t get to work with them in that capacity. So it was really great to — at that point, we had done 13 episodes and we’ve seen each other many times personally —then have this scene with them because now you’re connecting not just as actors who just showed up and you’re like, hello, I’m going to do the scene with you. You have history with each other as people, and now you see this history live in those characters and you can feel it. You can feel that these women know each other, they’re friends, and yet there’s still so much they don’t know about Mary Jo because sometimes people forget to ask.

How is she though when it comes to leaning on someone else? Because she’s the one that others lean on, how is that switch for her?

I think that’s not ever going to be easy for Mary Jo. Even if we reflect back to [Episode 4] when she was talking to Gibbs [Austin Stowell] … that became way too vulnerable for her. And so it was one of those moments where you saw her want to share but then pull back because that’s not a comfortable place. “I can help you. I don’t want you to know that I need help.” And so when we fast forward to Episode 14 and she’s literally talking to Lala and Vera and they’re hearing things they never heard before. It shows you that this doesn’t come to work. Mary Jo doesn’t bring her personal life to work. And so the way I see her and what makes her character interesting and gives nuance is that we know she has a life, but she doesn’t share it. So we want to know more. And that’s always going to be something, I think, that’s going to be hard for Mary Jo, to share more.

NCIS: Origins, Mondays, 10/9c, CBS

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