‘NCIS’: Gary Cole Talks the Franchise’s Tuesday Takeover and Crossover with ‘NCIS: Origins’ (Exclusive)

For the first time ever, NCIS is taking over a full night on CBS.

Starting Tuesday, NCIS, NCIS: Origins, and NCIS: Sydney will be airing on the same night for three hours straight.

NCIS star Gary Cole, who joined the Mothership in Season 19 as NCIS Supervisory Special Agent Alden Parker, told PopCulture.com ahead of the show’s 23^rd season premiere that it’s “fantastic for us to have an entire night.” He continued, “We’ve had all these franchises. I’m not sure if I remember if any of them were back-to-back at all. I think they might have all been at different times. So now we have Tuesdays, and I think it’s great. There’s continuity to that. I’m looking forward to seeing how that works for us this season.”

News of the full night of NCIS came in May when CBS unveiled the 2025-26 schedule. Tuesdays used to belong to the FBI franchise, consisting of the Mothership, FBI: International, and FBI: Most Wanted. But with the spinoffs getting canceled, CBS made the decision to make the two franchises swap nights, giving NCIS a full night on Tuesday and having FBI and offshoot CIA, premiering midseason, on Monday nights. Despite the franchise being around for over 20 years, this is going to be the first time that NCIS has occupied all three primetime slots in one night. And they’re going big.

In September, it was announced that NCIS and its prequel series, NCIS: Origins, will crossover for a special event, centering on a case spanning decades. The event premieres on Veteran’s Day, Monday, Nov. 11, and Cole shared what to expect.

“The way the structure of that will be, and just a little detail, is when we do that, our time slots will be flipped because Origins is obviously a prequel to NCIS,” he explained. “So what we’re gonna be seeing is kind of a case that they were working on or that was beginning to form, and then 30 years later, or whatever the timeline is, we pick up the mantle on something that was kind of left behind back in the day by the Origins cast. So it’s a nice connection.”

“Obviously, I didn’t even exist at the moment before, but I was wondering how we can do a crossover at the same time,” Cole continued. “But it’s the guest stars and a couple of characters that make that connection for us. But in that sense, Origins will be broadcast first, and then we’ll come back.”

More information will likely be released in the coming weeks, but fans will be happy knowing that, even despite the different decades, NCIS and Origins will be coming together. Don’t miss NCIS Tuesdays on CBS starting tonight at 8 p.m. ET with the Mothership, followed by Origins at 9 p.m. ET, and then Sydney at 10 p.m. ET.