[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS: Origins Season 1 Episode 14 “To Have and to Hold.”]
NCIS: Origins reveals Mary Jo’s (Tyla Abercrumbie) heartbreak in the March 24 episode.
It all stems from Mary Jo’s husband, Marcus (Guy Lockard), sending her divorce papers. Their marriage had been over for years, but they never made it official. They just grew apart, is all she tells Lala (Mariel Molino), who offers to have her sister look over the papers, and Vera (Diany Rodriguez). To Mary Jo’s shock, Marcus is asking for almost half of everything. But that’s all on his lawyer, he insists when she goes to see him; he didn’t ask for anything. She admits she’s not upset about the papers, but she just doesn’t want to forget. A flashback reveals what she means: the baby they lost and whose name is written on the wall of what’s now just her house — alongside three others.
Below, Abercrumbie opens up about Mary Jo’s heart-wrenching backstory, filming those emotional scenes, and more.
How much of Mary Jo’s backstory had you known before this episode and reading the script?
Tyla Abercrumbie: Well, I did know that she had lost a child. I knew that because in my audition, I was actually having a conversation with Gibbs [Austin Stowell] about losing a child. So I knew that they had maybe had that somewhere planned for her, but I did not know the extent to which — how many children she had lost or how she lost her children, at what stage. And so that was all very new for me. I got the script a week before or maybe three to four days before we actually began shooting on it, so it was a surprise to me as it was for everyone else.
Erik Voake / CBS
But the collaboration [with coshowrunners Gina Lucita Monreal and David J. North] brought about knowing that I wanted Mary Jo to have a life outside of work, that I wanted her to need from others because she is, like you said, helping everybody. She’s carrying the whole world on her back. And I felt that part of that for me, that is not only a way that women were viewed in the ‘90s, but it’s also a way Black women are viewed consistently, that they can take care of everybody else, but they don’t have a life. And we discussed that. So I knew a little, and then I didn’t know she was going to lose as many children as she’s lost or about the divorce. We talked about, how did I want a man in the life of Mary Jo? And so [I knew] very little, [and was] just as surprised as everyone else, put it that way.
We see the wall and then all the names…
Right? Gut-wrenching, right?
Yes. So if her ex hadn’t taken the step with the divorce papers, what would it have taken Mary Jo to do so?
I believe that she wouldn’t have made that move unless she met another person that was very important to her and she felt like, how can I move forward in this relationship without closing off this marriage? I think that when you become comfortable and safe — you think that you’ve wrapped this up, it’s off there. It’s not bothering you, he hasn’t mentioned it, I haven’t mentioned it, it’s comfortable that way. We are both comfortable being attached but detached. So I don’t see that she would’ve done anything.
That actually isn’t unusual in marriages where people separate for long periods of time, especially if they don’t have children and they don’t even go back to it, and people that are still in love with each other, but they have dysfunction. They’ve moved on and they’re living in different places, but they still have love for each other and it is comfortable. So I think people don’t move on until there’s healing. And what Marcus does when he sends the paper is he’s healing, and healing means that you must have closure. So he forces her to have closure, but I don’t think she would’ve done it.
And it’s understandable because anytime she sees him, that’s all she can think about. There’s no way that they can think about anything else except their losses when they see each other.
And that conversation gets stale, right? It’s like, what do we have to talk about now? Because we’re not even in each other’s lives. And I imagine it to be a conversation that you want to keep comfortable because you don’t want to reflect, you don’t want to blame, you don’t want to feel guilt or shame. When people lose their children, especially through miscarriage, I think people can’t help but feel a degree of fault. And it’s not anyone’s fault. You can’t predict it. Women face death 10 times when they’re in childbirth, but I think parents can’t help but feel like, what didn’t we do or what could we have done better? That conversation can just become laden with emotion and not allow you to move forward because you keep thinking about this family, this life I thought we would have. And instead we just have this brokenness and these babies that never — we didn’t get to see grow and go to school and get married, and how do you fix that? And that’s not unusual when relationships have something so emotionally tragic that they can’t move forward even if they’re in love.
I have to say I was offended for Mary Jo when she got the divorce papers and she’s like, ‘He wants what?’
I was offended by that, too. Let me tell you, when I saw it, I was just like, now, wait a minute. We cannot write this brother out here asking for alimony and half the house.
But it led to that really good scene between the two of them.
I loved it because I think that the visceral reaction that I had, and you had, and everybody else is going to have, but then we go further, which is a beautiful thing that Gina and David have done is like they set you up to be like, what? Even when Franks [Kyle Schmid] says, “Mary Jo, get it right,” or whatever he accuses her of, Mary Jo made a mistake. You’re like, what? And then you get this beautiful resolve with them, with her telling him, we don’t get to walk away from what we have to do. Then he goes and says the same thing to Randolf [Caleb Foote] and Randolf is repeating it. And so you get to be upset and then like, “Oh, okay. Alright. Here they go in Origins getting me all emotional.”
Speaking of, I’m really enjoying the Mary Jo and Franks scenes — that dynamic is so good.
Yes, I love it. I love working with Kyle Schmid. He’s amazing. I do love that we have this work marriage, and I think that’s also very fulfilling to Mary Jo, to have this work marriage where nobody else can talk to him and get him right except for her because she feels very comfortable in, what are you going to do to me? I think you feel that comfortable with people when you know you need them and they know that you need them and they need you, and that comfort allows you to be honest with that person. It’s like, I’m never going to not be honest with you and I’m always going to have your best interest at heart because I love you as a person. And I think Mary Jo and Franks have that. There is a solid respect and a love for one another, and so they’ll be those people who can be mad at each other and still communicate. They don’t have to shut down.
Sonja Flemming / CBS
He knows that place would fall apart without her.
He knows that. He knows that he depends a lot on her. And when you know that, even though you don’t acknowledge it, I think that you can respect the person that you have that connection with.
Talk about filming the flashbacks with Mary Jo and her husband, and then with that reveal. It was so emotional to watch.
It was very emotional. It was a very exhausting day in fact. Working with Guy Lockard was great. It was great because he was so ready to be available. And that was the first time we were meeting; we’d never met before as actors on any other project, and we didn’t know each other beforehand. It is not easy to show up and be emotional with someone that you never had any type of communication with. So I really applaud him, which is all of our jobs, to be ready and available and do what we’re asked to do. That’s not a surprise that he would show up like that, but it felt really great and supported to show up, know I have to have this through line for this character, and my scene partner was like, let’s do this.
It was very exhausting, a lot of crying. And on top of that, the next day, I’ll never forget, oh my God, it’s so funny to me — that day had taken so much out of me and like Mary Jo, I felt like, “Okay, I did my job well yesterday. Oh, that’s so good.” I showed up the next day, and my brain was fried. I was stumbling over lines. I was transposing sentences. Oh, I just felt so bad because I don’t know if my brain was exhausted or I was just emotionally drained because the truth of it is, I am acting a character, but my brain and body don’t know that this isn’t real. I surrender to the truth of what I’m doing, and I think we sometimes forget that you can’t just shake it off and show up and be like, now what do I have to do?
And for Mary Jo in particular, that was the first time I had to do that. Normally I’m just running around the office and talking and carrying on. This was the first time I had to have my emotional day and then show up and be the old Mary Jo. And I was like, oh no, my brain wasn’t clicking. So it was very difficult. It was beautiful because I love being able to have emotional scenes and tell a little more about her and let people see something else besides her in the office.
NCIS: Origins, Mondays, 10/9c, CBS