Special Agent Sam Hanna is back.
On Wednesday, April 15, CBS announced a series order for a new spinoff, NCIS: New York, with LL Cool J set to star as the character he originated on NCIS: Los Angeles. Scott Caan will star alongside the rapper in the latest franchise expansion, which is slated to premiere in the fall.
Per the logline, NCIS: New York will follow Sam Hanna as he “returns to his hometown of New York City to their field office” and partners with a “roguish agent,” played by Caan. Together, they’ll lead “a new team as they are tasked with high-stakes missions to defend one of the most vital cities and ports in the world.”
The rapper tells PEOPLE that he “never stepped out” of the NCIS world, so Sam Hanna is “a character that I’ve been living and breathing and just bringing to the world” for years.
“I’ve been kind of on and off doing the character all along, whether it was going to Hawaii, whether it was doing the mothership, you know, the original,” he says at CBS Fest on April 15. “I’m just having fun.”
He teases that fans can expect “a lot of big New York” in the new series. “You’ll enjoy it.”
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LL Cool J, 58, will also serve as an executive producer on the series, alongside R. Scott Gemmill and Jason Barrett. Byron Balasco will be showrunner.
NCIS: New York is slated to air on Tuesdays in the fall, after NCIS and before NCIS: Origins.
The rapper made his debut as Sam Hanna on NCIS: Los Angeles season 1 in 2009, and led the series alongside Chris O’Donnell for more than 300 episodes across 14 seasons.
The series concluded in 2023, which he told PEOPLE at the time felt like a “huge accomplishment” after such a successful run. “It’s like winning crazy Super Bowls or something,” he said.
He reprised his character in NCIS: Hawai’i the following year and appeared in a dozen episodes of that spinoff over its three seasons. “It just felt right to me. It felt like, ‘You know what? Let’s have some fun. Let’s do this,'” he told PEOPLE at the time of his decision to return to the character.
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The way NCIS: Los Angeles wrapped up was “open-ended,” he said, which left plenty of room for his character to return. “The story definitely wasn’t over at all, that’s for sure,” he said. “We’re finding out more about Sam, but remember, this is a different thing because Sam was transferred here.”
Reflecting on his decades-long run on the franchise, LL Cool J said he’s “so glad that I’m able to be part of something so special and unique in history, one of the longest-running franchises in television history.”