NCIS: Sydney won’t be following the tried and tested storyline of romance between the two leads, with Todd Lasance confirming that his character JD and Olivia Swann’s Mackey do not get it on.
During an interview with Chattr, Lasance explained that Jim ‘JD’ Dempsey and Michelle Mackey have a purely platonic working relationship.
He said that the idea of including a relationship between the two leads was discussed, but it was ultimately decided against.
“We had a direct conversation with the writers, producers and CBS. And they didn’t want [romance] because the series could potentially go forever,” he said. “It’d be this it’d be the cliche.”
Romantic storylines are complex and would add another hurdle for Michelle and JD to tackle if the show continues for multiple seasons and they were to stay in the same jobs.
Lasance explained that if there was a romance between them, their character’s attention could be focussed on that, rather than the job at hand.
“The character dynamics are so impressively written. But it’s great because you don’t need to play that [romantic] undertone. They work together as like this killer duo and they don’t tap into any of that.”
Todd Lasance on the pressure of starring on NCIS: Sydney
With five different versions and over 980 episodes of NCIS, taking on a role in the franchise is a pretty big deal.
Naturally, Lasance felt the pressure of stepping into the starring role of the new iteration, but said he came out confident that the show would be a success after filming finished.
“Now that we’ve wrapped, I feel a bit of the pressure that I hope that everyone loves the show and connects to it,” he said.
“But also, there’s pride because I feel like we’ve got something really unique here, too. It’s in the NCIS world, it’s in the franchise tone. It’s got that light, hard element. It’s got the procedural element to it, too. But, man, we’ve got some juice coming in this season.”
Stream NCIS Sydney exclusively on Paramount+.
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