NCIS is a global TV franchise, but what about the predecessor that made it all possible? JAG, the military legal drama from which NCIS spun off, marked the 20th anniversary of its finale in April and will hit the 30th anniversary of its premiere in September. And star David James Elliott, the actor behind Harmon Rabb, Jr., says a JAG revival might happen yet.
“I mean, there’s always a chance,” Elliott told Entertainment Weekly at Comic-Con on Saturday, July 26. “[Creator] Don Bellisario is still alive. I mean, it’s his 90th birthday coming up. Certainly, I think it would be interesting.”
That said, Elliott isn’t sure he’d be recruited for a JAG revival. “I would be down for it, but I don’t know if it involves me,” he added. “You know those reboots, they go, ‘Yeah, thank you. We got new guys!’”
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JAG, which follows the lawyers of the U.S. Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s office, premiered on NBC in 1995 — with Elliott costarring with Tracey Needham, who played Meg Austin. The show moved to CBS for its second season and stayed there until 2005, with Catherine Bell joining Elliott as Sarah “Mac” MacKenzie.
Several years ago, Elliott and Bell reprised their JAG roles in NCIS: Los Angeles’ 10th and 11th seasons. “I did that because of R. Scott Gemmill, who was a writer in the first two seasons of JAG,” Elliott told TV Insider this month. “He’s still a friend of mine. I pitched an idea to him, and he liked it. We were talking about maybe taking the Harm character and doing something with him or similar to [it], and then he goes, ‘Yeah, but why don’t we do this?’ And I went, ‘Oh, great.’ It was fun. It’s fun to work with him.”
But Elliott, who’s now starring on Revival on Syfy, doesn’t think he’ll play Harm on the flagship NCIS series, which is still going strong. “I don’t see that happening,” he told TV Insider. “I don’t really know any of the people on NCIS, but I guess if they came to me, I certainly would consider it. So who knows.”