NCIS: Sydney Boss on ‘Huge’ Season 2 Premiere Reveal, Mackey’s Cozy Hang With JD: ‘It’s a Pretty Combustible Combination’ — Grade It!
The following contains spoilers from the NCIS: Sydney Season 2 premiere.
NCIS: Sydney opened Season 2 on Friday night, picking up right where its year-ago finale left off — with NCIS Special Agent Michelle Mackey (played by Olivia Swann) slowly training her gun on Colonel Rankin, who’d just been outed as in cahoots with the people who kidnapped AFP Sergeant Jim “JD” Dempsey’s (Todd Lasance) son.
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Before he could utter a word in his defense, Rankin had a cardiac event, triggered by someone who’d remotely hacked his pacemaker. After both Mackey and JD got benched by their respective bosses (for among other things setting free the assassin “Ana Niemus,” who wound up in the wind), it fell on NCIS Special Agent DeShawn Jackson (Sean Sagar) to lead the hunt for Ana, and find out who has been pulling Rankin’s strings.
Whilst they both rode the pine, JD found himself at Mackey’s apartment one night. As they commiserated over beers, JD learned that Mackey has a teenage son back in the States. As Mackey opened up about her boy, and the tough decisions she had to make when she had him, a new, different bond formed between her and JD, who is in the dog house more than ever with his estranged wife.
TVLine spoke with NCIS: Sydney showrunner Morgan O’Neill about Mackey’s shared secret, and what’s to come of her and JD’s new… closeness.
TVLINE | Talk about the decision to give Mackey a son. Was that made out of whole cloth? Or was that always in your mind in Season 1?
I had done a lot of research on women in the military, and there’s a whole bunch of really fascinating research that’s come out about how successful women are in combat roles in the military…. But one of the other sides of being a woman in the military is that biologically, you’ve got a period where you’re capable of having kids, and it’s limited. That also happens to coincide where the period where women, if they want to be in active service in combat roles, are often called upon to go elsewhere, to be on deployment.
America’s just come out of a 20-year war where there’s a whole bunch of women who were serving in the military, who were called upon to deploy, and who had to make a really difficult choice. “Do I put off having a family? Do I have a family and go, or do I not have a family?” And they’re not decisions that men have to make in the same way. So, I became fascinated with Mackey’s headspace, decision-making, what drove her into the Marines, what drove her into NCIS, and it became very clear, early on, that one of the things that she was battling was a sense of, “Did I do the right thing?” She had a kid very young, before she made that decision to join the military — what does that do to her?
From the very beginning of my crafting this character of Mackey, I knew I wanted really interesting dimensions to it, and so we learn that she’s got a 17-year-old kid. For me, when I’m told stories and there are moments like that that force me to go back and look at previous moments with a different lens on, that’s where I get really excited, because that’s where I realize that the filmmakers are playing fair with me, and they’re offering me some stuff that actually allows me to reinterpret things I’ve already seen. And then, every moment that comes forward is going to be seen, at least partially, through that lens. The revelation of Mackey as a single mom with a 17-year-old kid is a huge revelation. I’m fascinated, and really excited to see what the audience makes of it.
TVLINE | During that reveal, Mackey and JD got kind of cozy there at her apartment. Where are you going with that? Because fans are probably going to be thinking, “His marriage has been on the rocks, she’s very single….”
Look, I defy anyone who’s ever spent 50 or 60 or 70 hours a week at the coalface, working alongside a colleague who is really cool and fun and clever and attractive…. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who hasn’t been in that situation at some point. When you add the fact that one is coming out of a broken marriage and one is single, it’s a pretty combustible combination.
But then you’ve got the fact that you don’t want to ever go there, because when you go there, you change the relationship at work forever. You’re never going to get that back. So, the push and pull of that is really at the core of a lot of what Mackey and JD do. They really do enjoy each other’s company. Whether there is a romantic element, again, we’ll wait and see whether there’s that chemistry that exists on that level. But certainly, you’ve got an interesting situation where you got two really talented, really front-foot, attractive, single people working shoulder-to-shoulder at that level. I’d be surprised if you didn’t see sparks fly on some level.
Want scoop on NCIS: Sydney, or for any other TV show ? Shoot an email to [email protected], and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
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