Kyle Schmid on Franks and Tish’s Future, Flashbacks, Brother (Exclusive)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS: Origins Season 1 Episode 13 “Monsoon.”]

Franks (Kyle Schmid) just couldn’t let it go.

The latest NCIS: Origins episode sees him continuing to look into who assaulted Tish (Tonantzin Carmelo), even though she’d asked him not to. But he has a lead — the man has a burn scar on his neck and a possible location — and when he admits as much to Tish, she tells him she loves him anyway but can’t be with him anymore. Flashbacks to 1982 show how they met and she began saving him (with a haircut). Plus, the case in present-day 1991 is a rough one for Franks: A vet (Nick Gomez‘s Tom) accidentally killed his friend during a war flashback.

Below, Schmid, who has been delivering standout performances as the show digs into his character, takes us inside this devastating episode for Franks and teases what’s ahead.

This is such a devastating episode for Franks, from the case and how that turned out for Tish. How is he doing at the end of this episode?

Kyle Schmid: Franks is just gutted. I mean, have you ever fallen in love and had to walk away from it just because something — there’s something so truly kind of tragic about how stubborn Franks is in the scenario where he’s unable to walk away from something that is just kind of tearing him apart from the inside. And the fact that Tish needs to take her space, which you can’t help but respect, it’s kind of a little Romeo and Juliet-ish where you have two kind-of star-crossed lovers that have been pulled apart because of this tragedy. Tonantzin Carmelo is great in the episode and always a pleasure to work with. And that scene at the end, it was tough to shoot because it really does kind of hit all the hard spots, you know what I mean?

And it comes after that tough case for him because he got personally involved in it. So it’s just like one thing on top of another for Franks.

Yeah, I mean, no kidding. Let’s talk about Nick Gomez, the guy who played our vet. What a phenomenal actor and person. And you talk about commitment and character work. Nick was phenomenal and by the end of it, I was like, “Please don’t go, man. Can we just rewrite the end of this? I’d love to work with you for the entirety of the show.” He was just such a pleasure to work with.

Franks hadn’t been able to stop looking for the guy who attacked Tish even after she’d made him promise not to. But could he have, if he’d known this was how it would’ve ended up, just based on who Franks is? I feel like he wouldn’t have been able to let it go, right?

No, there’s no way Franks could let that go. It’s too personal. It’s broken this kind of unspoken bond of trust in humanity. There are certain crimes in the world that I think should be just punishable by death, and that is one of them. And I think that’s where Kyle and Franks share some moral common ground. Violating a woman, whether it be violently or sexually, or any human being is unacceptable. And your love, the love of your life and your partner…

Franks has the mental capacity to deal with the consequences of going after him. He’s been to Vietnam, he’s suffered great loss in his life. He’s taken [a] life. And when you have those tools as a human being and you know that you’re able to compartmentalize and utilize them in order to survive, in order to take retribution, Franks knows that he can shoulder the consequences of his actions if he were to go after the guy. And so, to me, it was always very clear that I was going to be unable to let it go. And God love the Tish character for being so pure and holding on to that sense of humanity that you need to move on with your life, which Franks is obviously unable to do.

It looks like they’re over. But what can you say about what we might see from Franks and Tish going forward? Is she going to be back?

I think there’s still a part of that story that needs to be told for multiple reasons. One of those reasons being that Tonantzin as an actress is just so good, but also in the sense that she’s such a big part of Franks’ life that I hope the writers can have her visit Franks, whether it be in the form of the real world or flashbacks or maybe perhaps the ghost of, the angel on the shoulder, the moral compass for him because she has been that. And I think that was the biggest part of their relationship, that she was the only person that Franks would listen to, up until this specific scenario, where she could guide him and be his compass.

He still has that lead about the scar on the burn scar on the neck, he knows where he is going to look. So is he going to continue to do that? Is he still going back to that laundromat?

Well, she’s left and he hasn’t made any promises to make her stay. So my inkling might be that we might have to find this motherf**ker.

Greg Gayne/CBS

I have to say I love the flashbacks to their first meeting. Talk about filming those and getting into Franks’ mindset for those flashbacks.

Oh my God, the crew was calling me sexy Jesus on set. It was ridiculous. [Laughs] It was so much fun. The producers were so specific with the look of what they wanted. It was a Jim Morrison-esque kind of feeling. Shay Sanford-Fong, who’s our key hair, spent weeks prepping my wig and making sure that it was absolutely perfect. And Jenny [Lin], who’s our key makeup, was in charge of the beard. Those are hours and hours and days of prep to make something look so realistic and so incredible, so huge thank you to them. Because when you look in the mirror and you don’t feel like it’s genuine and it works, it’s not going to work. So when you get to put on those pieces, for me, it’s like my boots and my guns — they just make you like a whole person. And for those pieces, it was really an opportunity to step back.

But also it was fun to play with his voice. We’re going back six, seven years with the flashbacks perhaps, kind of playing in that world where he hasn’t smoked two packs a day for 10 years. Kind of also playing into the cadence of the young Mike’s accent and ear trying to blend the two so we can see the transition naturally occur from what we saw in [Episode] 11. So borrowing some of what Brandon Spink had done [as the younger version] and the vocal work and then knowing where I end up and playing into the middle, there was a lot of fun. Riding a motorcycle again, being on a Harley Davidson felt fantastic. It’d been 10 years since I’d ridden a bike. And it was so much fun to be able to do that.

But also just to be kind of in that hippie world of Mike Franks. We see the gruff, put-together, driven man that he is today in 1991. And then to see what Vietnam did, which very much s**t all over the military who served out there and came home to thankless media and people. When your job is to protect and serve, you are following orders, you are doing your job and you are doing it to the best of your ability to protect the person beside you in the trenches. Every single serviceman who was over there deserves to come home to love and respect, regardless of the politics of the war. And I think we touch on that really well in this episode. And so going into that flashback, I think you have a writer like [co-showrunners] Gina [Lucita Monreal] and David [J. North], who obviously have fantastic character work. And because we’re on a network show, politics is something that you tread lightly on, but they’ve done it so well in hopes that we can have an audience empathize and truly understand the human being that came back from war. And where you can end up with the right help, which, without Tish, Franks very much most likely would’ve ended up just like Tom. And if only Franks could have gotten to Tom’s character earlier, perhaps we wouldn’t have been in this situation we were in the episode. It’s just powerful. The writing is so powerful. It’s such a gift to be able to bring it to life.

We’re really getting stuff about Franks between the midseason premiere and this and the stuff with his brother. I have so many questions about his brother. Is there anything else coming up there? 

I want to know, too. I want to know, too. I have that line in the opening scene, I’m under the glass table and she goes, “Your brother’s calling.” And I go, “I don’t have a brother.” And I’m like, “Guys, what do you mean, I don’t have a brother? We were just introduced to my brother,” and I didn’t get an answer. So I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know. I have theories, and the fun part about the fan world is we all get to kind of speculate together. And this is the first show I’ve ever been on where — I’ve been part of some really wonderful productions and gritty stuff. I’ve always been too close to the material that I’ve been unable to watch it. I think with Origins, I play such a big character that is so unlike myself that I’m able to separate one from the other. And so I truly enjoy watching the show. I can’t wait to watch and see what the fans say and what the speculation is on what happened in Vietnam, if he never made it back, where he went, what happened between the two. There’s so many variables in that scenario. And I will say the kid who played my older brother in [Episode] 11, Matthew Erick White, that kid’s a star. He’s so good. He’s such a great actor. I can’t wait to see him again. I can’t wait to see what happens with that storyline.

Are there more flashbacks coming?

Buckle your seatbelt for Episode 15. Because there are flashbacks and we get to see this whole thing come full circle. It’s so good. [Episode] 15 is so good. I can’t wait for you to see that one.

NCIS: Origins, Mondays, 10/9c, CBS