Kyle Schmid is replying to fan mail as Mike Franks. Real fan mail. The kind that needs a stamp.
With the NCIS: Origins season 3 premiere approaching, the series is rolling out a companion show centered on one of its leads — and the format is odder than your usual behind-the-scenes featurette.
In an Instagram video, Schmid appears in character as Mike and explains that letters asking for advice have been piling up over the past few weeks. Since not everybody has, in Mike’s words, “a real man in their life to talk to,” he’s starting an advice program called Let’s Talk Frank, where viewers can write in for “tips about life.”
The twist: no DMs, no comment sections. If you want a question answered, you have to put it on paper and mail it to the address that appears in the video and in the caption of the post.
Who Mike Franks is, and why he gets his own show
The franchise’s first prequel, NCIS: Origins follows Leroy Jethro Gibbs as he begins his career at the agency in the early 1990s. Franks, played by Schmid, is the man who brought Stowell’s Gibbs into the organization — then known as NIS — in the wake of the murders of Gibbs’ wife and daughter.
Franks remains part of season 3. On top of that, this newly announced companion series gives him a spotlight online, and hands Schmid one more venue for the character’s Texan charm and his distinctive philosophy about how life works.
Its lifespan hasn’t been spelled out. Whether Let’s Talk Frank is strictly a pre-premiere promotion or carries on through season 3 and beyond remains unclear.
The cameo at the end says a lot
The video closes with Tyla Abercrumbie appearing as Mary Jo Hayes — a sign that other Origins regulars may drop into future Let’s Talk Frank installments as well.
The character’s history stretches far past this prequel. Muse Watson portrayed Franks on the original NCIS, where he repeatedly emerged from retirement to lend a hand to the Washington D.C. team under Gibbs, played there by Mark Harmon.
The season 8 episode “Swan Song” killed Mike off. It barely slowed him down. Watson resurfaced in several later episodes via flashbacks and as a ghost or vision.
Watson also made a short return last year in the Origins episode “Funny How Time Slips Away,” during an aging sequence in which Schmid’s Mike transforms into his older self.
What season 3 has to clean up
Two loose ends were left hanging by the season 2 finale. Gibbs shared a first kiss with Mariel Molino’s Cecilia “Lala” Dominguez, and Caleb Foote’s Bernard “Randy” Randolf was abducted over something tied to the NCIS case files he had been digitizing.
Harmon, an executive producer and the narrator of Origins, is moving in front of the lens. He is set to appear on screen throughout the entirety of season 3 in a present-day thread.
The season is also a leaner one. Season 3 has been confirmed at 10 episodes, a drop from the 18 that each of the first two seasons ran.
When to watch
Season 3 of NCIS: Origins debuts Tuesday, October 6 at 9 p.m. ET on CBS. NCIS season 24 and the new spinoff NCIS: New York arrive the same evening.
Everything in the NCIS-verse streams on Paramount+.
Until the premiere, there’s a mailbox out there with Mike Franks’ name on it, waiting on your handwriting.