NCIS: ORIGINS star Austin Stowell carries his late father’s story into one of television’s most stoic heroes.
“I am who I am because of my dad, not in spite of him,” the actor said in a raw conversation with co-star Kyle Schmid about grief, forgiveness, therapy and the courage to ask for help.
The 88-minute YouTube interview, uploaded in November 2024, moved far beyond shop talk. Stowell described a blue-collar Connecticut childhood with his mother, a teacher; his father, an ironworker; and two older brothers.
One memory still shines. Stowell recalled being 7 or 8 when a priest asked his congregation whether anyone considered himself rich, and the boy raised his hand because he had a roof above him and a family who loved him.
The harder memories came later. Stowell said his father lived with severe mental illness that went undiagnosed until late in life, making the family home, in the actor’s telling, unpredictable and dangerous.
In 2018, Stowell said he found his father living in Florida and seriously unwell, then helped check him into psychiatric care. His father later died by suicide, a loss Stowell has also discussed in another interview about how he approached Leroy Jethro Gibbs.
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Learning more about his father’s diagnoses gave Stowell language for pain he had carried since childhood. Recognizing that his parents were human, too, helped him forgive and move forward.
“Acceptance, it’s just very, very powerful,” he said.
Stowell had already begun his own mental-health work. He said he started therapy at 18 after his college offered counseling services, and he did not hesitate.
“I immediately went for it,” he said.
The National Institute of Mental Health says psychotherapy can help people work through long-term family stress, the loss of a loved one and other problems that affect emotional health. Stowell said two decades of therapy gave him a set of tools he can reach for when life gets hard, even though those tools do not provide a quick fix.
“I needed somebody to hear me,” he said, adding that speaking aloud gave him perspective on what was really happening in his life.
That history meets his work on NCIS: ORIGINS, which follows a young Gibbs as he begins his career at the Camp Pendleton office. Stowell told Schmid that his father’s death gave him a close perspective on Gibbs’ own suicidal crisis, though both actors took care not to confuse a television story with real life.
Storytelling, Stowell said, lets viewers encounter their own struggles through someone else’s experience rather than a lecture. For him, revisiting grief on set has become a therapeutic release and a chance to help people work through pain.
Stowell now sees speaking openly as part of his responsibility. To him, strength includes showing another man where help can be found.
“I hope this reaches other people, even one,” he said. “Even one is great, right?”
If you or someone you know is in crisis or having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In life-threatening situations, NIMH advises calling 911.
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