The CBS drama has already served up a couple of Franks-centric episodes in the procedural’s first season, but Monday’s installment gave viewers more insight into the start of his relationship with wife Tish [Tonantzin Carmelo] and just how messed up he was before he ultimately joined NIS.
Here, Kyle Schmid — who plays Gibbs’ irascible mentor Mike Franks — explains why it was important for fans to get a look-see into his character’s past and why he earned the moniker of “sexy Jesus” after doing the episode.
SCHMID That was outside Santa Clarita, Calif. That was an old 1972 Harley. God, it was nice to ride. It’d been 10 years since I’d ridden a bike. The only thing, it was six o’clock in the morning in January, so it was like 58 degrees, and we went from shooting that scene to shooting the freezing cold water all over my head. So it was a chilly one.
DEADLINE Yes, let’s talk about that. Did you happen to notice how they slo-mo’ed that scene when you washed yourself off with the gas station hose?
SCHMID I laughed because I turned to the director at one point and said, ‘this better not turn out like a cheesy music video. I’m already wearing a white T-shirt. This ain’t a white T-shirt contest. This ain’t a shampoo commercial.’ They’re like, ‘no, no, just tilt your head up and do that.’ And then they did it. I didn’t know it was in slow motion though. I was as surprised as you were.
SCHMID Episode five was pretty big. It was a case that was very close to Franks, something that he was unable to let go. And then episode 11, we got into some flashbacks with younger versions of myself before Vietnam when I had been drafted. So we got to meet my brother, which we discover in this episode has become estranged in my life. But in this episode, I would say the most happens. We go from the flashbacks to my relationship with Tish and how we met. So it’s a very big episode for Franks.
DEADLINE When did you find out that Franks was a bit of a loser back in the day? Did the showrunners let you know at the start of the season?
SCHMID It was discussed between myself and the writers over the course of the last six months or so. Franks doesn’t have all of the qualities of a leader. I’m a byproduct of experiences in my life that get me from A to B. When I was the veteran, I hold the knowledge to be able to take orders, to be able to delegate, to survive. But nobody came back from Vietnam, and it was all rainbows and butterflies. Mike is broken. You can see by the way he is affected by all the cases in his life. You can see by his relationships, you can see by the way he’s unable to communicate He is a perfectly broken human being in a kind of wonderful way.
I think it’s unfair to call him a loser because, given the circumstances that vets were put in post-Vietnam, the government wasn’t taking care of anybody. The PTSD made it almost impossible to be able to carry a job. They were spat on and abused by US citizens for carrying out orders of a government. So he was a byproduct of a society that rejected him. Franks was lost. He felt disillusioned and unable to find an anchor in his own life. So he floated and perhaps found purpose in minimal tasks like, ‘hey, man, you want to drive some drugs across the states?’
And then he meets Tish. You have the beginning of this love story that is just kind of magical. But his wife is raped and he’s unable to protect her. Everything in his being supports his moral compass and his ability to protect those around him. Yet the person he loves the most in the world suffers at the hand of a stranger. What is his job? His job is to find these people. And she says, don’t. So in his head, he’s already failed.
