Stephen Amell Auditioned To Play Gibbs In NCIS: Origins, And He Explained How Losing That Role And Other Stresses Helped Him Land Suits L.A.
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Following his eight-season run as Oliver Queen on The CW’s Arrow and his short-lived run playing Jack Spade in Heels, Stephen Amell will soon be back on the small screen, this time setting up shop on NBC. Earlier this year, he was cast to play Ted Black in Suits L.A., but had things turned out differently, we might have seen him playing Leroy Jethro Gibbs in the prequel NCIS: Origins instead. While his audition for that show premiering soon on the 2024 TV schedule didn’t end up working out, that missed opportunity and other stresses in Amell’s life ended up helping his Suits L.A. audition.
How Stephen Amell's NCIS: Origins Audition Went
During his latest visit to Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, Stephen Amell recalled to the title host how when both the NCIS: Origins and Suits L.A. auditions came his way this past January, a few months after the writers and actors strikes had ended. As such, he admitted that had Origins come along as an offer, he wouldn’t have necessarily done it, but he was “excited” by the prospect of auditioning for a network show during pilot season, which “doesn’t really happen that much anymore.” He continued:
So this came in, and I thought the audition went extraordinarily well, I got great feedback. I hadn’t looked at the sides for Suits LA yet. And then I found out on Thursday afternoon, after getting not just good feedback, but good intel, ‘We think this is actually going to move forward,’ all of a sudden, it was dead. And I felt like someone, somewhere along the line, had cockblocked me.
Austin Stowell was ultimately cast as Leroy Jethro Gibbs in NCIS: Origins, which takes place a little over a decade before the flagship series began. Stephen Amell never learned what precisely led to his Origins arrangement falling through, but it left him frustrated. On top of that, he was also taken care of his two children “solo” while his wife was in Hawaii, and he also got a “shitty phone call” about a “personal business thing” that was also bothering him. So although he’d successfully ran lines for his Suits L.A. audition with his 11-year-old daughter the day before, he wasn’t in the best of moods shortly before it was time for him to try out to play Ted Black.
How Losing Out On NCIS: Origins And More Helped Him For Suits L.A.
In fact, Stephen Amell went on to say in the interview that the combination of all these stresses resulted in him having a “full fucking breakdown in the car” on the phone with his wife, which included him screaming. As he laid out:
I was really mad, I was really mad, to the point that when I arrived to the audition, I looked at myself in the mirror, my eyes were all bloodshot, I was totally harried, my heart rate was probably 130, and I walked into that audition with kind of no fear. Went in, read the audition, tried to be a lot looser and more spontaneous than I think probably a lot of other people were because this guy’s a lawyer. This guy’s supposed to be the smartest guy in the room, but concurrently, I just figured everyone was going to be stone-cold serious, so let’s just have a little bit of fun.
Between taking that laid back approach and learning after the audition that he wasn’t testing against anyone else, clearly it all worked out for Amell in the end, as it was announced in February that he would be leading the Suits L.A. pilot. Then in mid-July, it was announced that the spinoff of USA Networks’ Suits was officially happening at NBC, and the first look at Amell as Ted Black was released. He’s joined in the main cast by Josh McDermitt, Lex Scott Davis and Bryan Greenberg. As with the original Suits, Aaron Korsh created the spinoff and is serving as showrunner.
It hasn’t been announced yet when Suits L.A. will arrive on NBC, but NCIS: Origins will begin its run on CBS Monday, October 14, airing immediately after the NCIS Season 22 premiere. Keep visiting CinemaBlend for more coverage on both these shows and other NBC, CBS and broadcast network offerings.
