Yahoo Lifestyle 'NCIS: Origins' Reveals a Pivotal Part of Mike Franks' Past, Including His Brother (Exclusive)
NCIS: Origins may have come into being to tell the backstory of Leroy Jethro Gibbs. But he isn’t the only NIS agent with a tale to tell. On tonight’s “Flight of Icarus” episode, a pivotal part of Mike Franks’ (Kyle Schmid) past involving his family is revealed in flashbacks.
“We knew that Mike Franks was from Texas, we knew that he was a Marine and he mentioned a brother in one line, so we had those pieces,” co-showrunner Gina Lucita Monreal tells Parade. “The rest we created around those pieces that we already had.”
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The team’s investigation into the death of a Marine general’s son sends Franks on his own journey into the past, taking us back to Texas and his decision to join the Marine Corps, rather than get inducted into the Army during the Vietnam War era.
“We wanted to stick to canon, and we wanted to stay close to the character of who we felt that Franks was and there are pieces of the Vietnam story that we haven't seen yet. So hopefully all of those questions will be answered once we delve into that,” Monreal continues.
The young Mike Franks will be played by a moustache-free Brandon Spink. His brother Mason, who we are meeting for the first time, will be played by Matthew Erick White. In the casting, Monreal and North were looking for a familial resemblance between the two, but the actor playing Mike also had to share some characteristics with his future self.
Related: NCIS: Origins Reveals The Secret Behind Gibbs' Killing of Pedro Hernandez
“We were really looking for the strongest actor who had the essence of Franks,” co-showrunner David J. North tells Parade. “Really that was it. We were looking for someone at a younger age that we really believed could develop into that swag that Franks has and that that Kyle has.”
The decision to set Mike Franks’ backstory into a possible NIS suicide case was an idea that was much talked about in the writers’ room. There were many iterations of what the story was going to be before the decision was finalized. Namely, would there be parallels to Franks, or would it be something else?
“We thought to do a story that shared some emotional ties and not necessarily story points,” Monreal says. “This was more interesting and something maybe that people hadn't seen. I think, for me at least, that's the way it is with life. You hear the story, or someone tells you something and it affects you. It's not exactly what you're going through. But it affects you on some deeper level ,and that's what we're going for here.”
Related: NCIS: Origins Star Austin Stowell Reveals the Personal Tragedy He Used to Get Inside Gibbs’ Head
"What Gina and Jen Corbett wrote in this script, peeling away that sort of loss and that emotion of not being able to believe it and seeing that through the eyes of a powerful general, it was just so moving when I read it," North says. "We're just so proud of this."
In addition to staying true to NCIS canon and also the year (1991) in which NCIS: Origins is set, the show makes it a point to stick to the appropriate science and the soundtrack of the era. So, when they did a flashback to Franks’ home life in Texas in the ‘60s, they also made it a point to keep the music appropriate. To that point, they were lucky enough to get clearance to use Bob Dylan’s “It’s Alright, Ma," very timely given the release of the biopic A Complete Unknown
“When Gina and Jen originally wrote it into that script, we had no idea that the Dylan movie was coming out. And now with the Oscars and everything happening and it's such a fantastic movie, we're really excited to be hitching our star to the Bob Dylan bandwagon right now,” North says.
NCIS: Origins airs tonight at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. Episodes stream the next day on Paramount+.
