NCIS: Origins Episode 14 ‘To Have and to Hold’ goes into the backstory of Mary Jo, a character that in many ways is the soul of NIS and the soul of the show. But like many women we have known—perhaps like women we have at some times in our lives been—Mary Jo doesn’t always get the credit for being the soul of the NIS office. But we wanted to take a moment to give Tyla Abercrumbie, who plays her, the credit for the character and for this spectacular episode that left us very, very emotional.
As Fangirlish sat down to discuss the hour with Abercrumbie, we discussed not just the importance of Mary Jo, but what it means to play one of those characters who “loves like it’s their job,” and how the message of the episode is that we have to notice those people in our lives better.
“I believe that we all know that person,” Abercrumbie shared. “And isn’t is so real? All people can think of is when you’re not there to be the thing they need you to be, or do the thing they need you to do or if you do that thing incorrectly. Other than that, they have tunnel vision. It’s like they say, you never miss the water until the well runs dry or until that person is no longer with us.”
That’s a little bit of the feeling we get with Franks in this episode, that he doesn’t really appreciate Mary Jo, or at least doesn’t realize how important she is. But, ironically, he does listen to her. To that regard, Abercrumbie shared that “we never think when someone tells us something, where that came from. We just receive that information from that person, and we are off on our day.”
And she added that, “I think it’s beautiful that these agents who love Mary Jo are not aware that Franks listens to her in a way that nobody else could get through to him. And even as caught up in all this bravado as he is, he’s still being influenced by someone.”
But this episode isn’t about Franks, and it isn’t even about Mary Jo’s influence on others—though that plays a big role, it’s about what she’s going through. It’s about her personal struggle and how she’s getting through the day. And Abercrumbie shared that it’s something that “for someone who wanted to be a mother and tried very hard to become a mother,” it’s about “how great that absence of being a mother is,” just as much as it is about how “you find it somewhere else.”
“And that’s what Mary Jo’s done, is she’s found in caretaking other people, that motherly feeling, that nurturing feeling.”
For Abercrumbie, the backstory wasn’t something she knew before the table read. “I never read the episode alone. My first time reading the episode was in the reading room. I like to have the actual voices of the actual characters talking to me, and their emotion. So, it was very, I don’t even know the word to use when you stop and you’re just like wow, you know, you’re left there to kind of stop…I didn’t see that coming.”
The revelation that Mary Jo hadn’t just lost one baby, but multiple babies, left her as emotional as it left us. “David and Gina and myself, we had a conversation about Mary Jo and kind of what I saw for her and what they were planning for her and how we can make those two ideas come together because they were really collaborative. But I didn’t know what that was going to turn into that conversation. But when I read it, I was just like, wow, you guys took the ball and ran.”
“And, and so seeing those, those names, it was really moving to me. I don’t have any children, and I knew that I wasn’t going to have children. That was a choice for me. But my niece, I remember my niece lost her baby at five months and what that looked like on her and felt like for her. And, and, and she wanted to have it. They, her and my nephew went right away into getting pregnant again, which was scary for me because I was like, she hasn’t even gotten over the first loss, but she needed to do that for herself.”
“But, in this process, I found out that she had… this was her second miscarriage and, they have a beautiful baby girl now, but I remember experiencing that with her and thinking, wow. I know what to use for this as motivation, not just something manufactured in my head, but something that I watched and saw. And I know that many women and fathers as well will feel this episode and be glad to see that story because those children that are lost and have names are not forgotten.”
Perhaps that was one of the most touching moments of the episode, Mary Jo’s insistence on just that, remembering. And Abercrumbie wanted to tie that to also, how hard it is to have to do that and just, keep showing up to work, having to go on. “I do believe this episode is going to touch mothers, fathers, anyone that has had that feeling of loss and yet they have to show up at work.”
That holds true no matter what kind of loss you’ve suffered. “You know, we all compartmentalize, and we get to work, and nobody knows what we’re dealing with because that’s not what we are. We’re not raised to bring it to the offices, instead, we check it at the door.”
Perhaps Mary Jo’s example will make us all more empathetic. “Hopefully, it’ll make people think about that sometimes with their coworkers, like what are they really going through? And yet she still has the ability to have a smile. She doesn’t snap at anybody. She doesn’t, you know, she gets on Gail a little bit, but that’s it.”
Instead, she just keeps going on. Fixing everything for everyone. Loving everyone like it’s her job.
NCIS: Origins airs on Mondays at 10/9c on CBS.
Here are our last 5 NCIS: Origins reviews:
Lovely interview!