Despite joining NCIS as FBI Special Agent Alden Parker nearly three years ago, Gary Cole admitted he’s still getting his bearings.
Cole, 67, took over the lead role on the long-running drama from Mark Harmon during season 19 in September 2021, but the veteran actor acknowledged he’s having trouble with direction — literally.
“I’m constantly lost still,” Cole exclusively told Us Weekly at the CBS Fall Schedule Celebration Thursday, May 2, on the Paramount Studios lot in Los Angeles.
Cole joked, “There’s people that have been there 20 years that make a wrong turn and we’re looking for them.”
As Cole further explained, he can sometimes still have questions about the story lines on the show, which ran for nearly two decades before he came on board.
“I’m always asking, ‘What happened here?’” Cole said. “I mean, old episodes always come up. Not necessarily for research, but just to use it to see what happened when we were out here. You get a sense of what the stories were and what was up.”
When Cole effectively replaced Harmon as the lead on NCIS, he credited the writers with making his job “pretty easy.”
“I thought the writers really solved a lot of issues,” he said, “because they didn’t make it into a situation where you hear a knock on the door and it was like ‘Hi, I’m the new guy.’”
Cole and Harmon, 72, appeared in three episodes together before Harmon officially left the show during the fourth episode of season 19. In total, Harmon appeared on over 435 episodes of NCIS during his 18-year run.
To get him acclimated, Cole also credited the show’s ensemble cast with creating an invigorating creative environment.
“I enjoy when there’s a lot of us in a scene,” Cole said. “We’ve become pretty good at doing a scene with five or six people. Everybody knows their choreography. It’s really like a dance. That’s been fun to develop with this group.”
The sentiment was echoed by costar Katrina Law, who plays Jessica Knight on NCIS. Law gushed to Us Weekly, “I think Gary Cole is one of the best humans and best actors on this planet.”
As for the show’s upcoming season 21 finale, Cole acknowledged he couldn’t say much, but promised “a little cliffhanger.”
Cole said, “Hopefully that’s where we delivered.”
The season finale of NCIS airs on CBS Monday, May 6, at 9 p.m. ET.