Who Did Ralph Waite Play On NCIS & Where Have You Seen Him Before?
Who Did Ralph Waite Play On NCIS & Where Have You Seen Him Before?
As a macho military leader, it’s no surprise that longtime “NCIS” protagonist Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ (Mark Harmon) complex relationship with his father is key to the man he is in the show’s present day. Ralph Waite is the actor who played Gibbs’ father, Jackson, over the course of his appearances in eight “NCIS” episodes between Seasons 6 and 10.
Gibbs first introduces his father to the rest of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service team in Season 6, Episode 4. His final credit is in Season 11, Episode 24, where Gibbs learns that his father died of a stroke. In a piece for Entertainment Weekly, former “NCIS” showrunner Gary Glasberg revealed that this episode’s focus on Jackson arose from a desire to dedicate a storyline to Waite’s memory after the actor’s death in February 2014. “We had something very real happen to us off-screen. We lost someone we truly cared about. And now it was time to let Leroy Jethro Gibbs say goodbye to his father, too,” Glasberg wrote.
