NCIS has been on for 23 seasons now, and so it’s lost quite a few characters over the years. In Episode 500, part of Season 23, the team inarguably suffered its biggest loss to date, when Director Leon Vance was killed off, and Rocky Carroll exited after 18 seasons. Carroll reflects on that, how his character was written out, and his last scene in the Tuesday, May 12, episode of the NCIS: Partners & Probies podcast, and TV Insider has an exclusive clip.
“Man, I got a curtain call,” Carroll says, sitting down with the podcast’s hosts, Brian Dietzen and Diona Reasonover. Calling it a “tribute,” he adds, “If I was any other cast member, I’d say, ‘I want it in my contract. That’s what my last episode is going to be. I want something — I want the equivalent of that curtain call for my episode.’”
As the star and director pointed out, “We’ve lost a lot of characters on NCIS and people may or may not remember how a certain character [exited, but] they’re not gonna forget Director Vance’s last episode.”
Dietzen and Reasonover agree. “A lot of that is story, and I’d say most of it is you,” Dietzen says. “It’s your performance within that.”
Reasonover reveals the “regret” she has about that episode — but she has a good reason for it.
“One of the only regrets I have is I didn’t stay,” she shares. “The scene where I’m wearing the dog collar and I kind of show up at the evidence garage, that was the scene right before your final scene, and I regret not staying and I didn’t stay because I was barely holding it together. If you actually saw the outtakes from that, every time they cut the cameras, I’m crying in this dog collar because I couldn’t bear to see you go. And I was like, I’m going to ruin his [last scene]. But I wish I had stayed.”
Watch the full video above for more, including what Carroll ad-libbed in his final scene.
Vance died saving NCIS after the team uncovered a weapons smuggling operation; those responsible were trying to blow up the building to get rid of evidence when he defused the bomb, only to then be shot by a dirty Army CID agent.
When Carroll talked to us about that shocking episode, he shared, “When it was laid all out, and when they did tell me the whole plot line and the story, my first thought, completely candidly, was, ‘It’s actually a terrific story.’”