As the creator of the “NCIS” franchise, Donald P. Bellisario has played a big part in making the United States Navy look cool. But his relationship with the military organization wasn’t always smooth sailing. While speaking to the Television Academy Foundation, he revealed that his “JAG” series faced pushback from the Navy, which didn’t like the idea of a show about its lawyers.
“The Navy were really obstructionist on the pilot … I was shooting down in Corpus Christi on a museum ship down there, and the Navy threatened to withhold supplies from them if they cooperated with me. And this went on until the next year.”
According to Bellisario, the Navy became more receptive to his hit ’90s series following the death of Michael Boorda, a former Chief of Naval Operations. Oliver North — a former high-ranking member of the U.S. Marine Corps — ultimately convinced Navy officials that “JAG” could be good for boosting the organization’s image. The rest is, as they say, history.
“The next thing I know, the Navy is going to help me. Then the Navy realized, you know what, [the creators of ‘JAG’] are really doing a good job for us.”
How the Navy eventually helped JAG
After Oliver North got “JAG” into the Navy’s good books, the organization went on to support the show’s creators. In fact, both the Navy and U.S. Marine Corps lent their expertise to the beloved CBS series, providing feedback on scripts and even offering bases to use in the episodes.
Of course, “JAG” doesn’t always paint the Navy in a positive light. The show often tells stories about naval officers being prosecuted for crimes. Overall, though, it’s a very pro-military show, which ultimately pleased the Navy.
“The show had to have bad guys on it or there would have been no drama,” Bob Anderson, a former Navy official, told the Los Angeles Times. “In the end though, the Navy does the right thing — bad people are punished, and good people are rewarded.”
Oliver North also endorsed the show, with the former military official even appearing as a guest star across three episodes.
This story originally appeared on TVLine
