Suits LA star left fuming after being ‘blocked’ from major NCIS role

Suits LA star Stephen Amell was furious after supposedly being “c***-blocked” from the NCIS franchise.

He claims he was up for the role of a young Leroy Jethro Gibbs (played by Mark Harmon) for NCIS: Origins, which eventually went to Austin Stowell.

After a lengthy audition process, he got the feeling from producers that they were ready to greenlight the show with Stephen in the lead role.

However, communication suddenly stopped short and he never heard back about the part.

He recalls being “excited by the prospect” of doing a show for a major network like CBS and maintained the auditions went “extraordinarily well”.

Now about to lead the new spin-off from the popular USA Network drama Suits as LA lawyer Ted Black, he revealed on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum that he auditioned for the role the same week as his NCIS audition,

“It was playing the younger version [of Leroy Jethro Gibbs],” he confirmed.

“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, like, good intel, like, ‘We think this is actually gonna move forward’ – all of a sudden, it was dead.”

Not only did the auditions go well, but Stephen got the sense he had a great chance of actually bagging the role of young Gibbs.

The producers eventually went for someone slightly younger, 39-year-old Austin as opposed to 43-year-old Stephen.

“And I felt like someone, somewhere along the line, had, like, c***-blocked me… So I didn’t know what was going on, and I was really frustrated,” he admitted.

Austin is best known for roles in Catch-22 as well as the rom-com film The Hating Game. Meanwhile, Stephen, who portrayed Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow for almost a decade on The CW, also revealed he had a “breakdown” on his way to the Suits: LA audition.

“I called my wife on the way to the audition… and I got a s***ty phone call about a personal business thing,” he revealed.

“Combine that with being solo with both kids all week [and] my perceived NCIS slight, and I had a full f***ing breakdown in the car, emotional, screaming.”

Thankfully, once inside the audition room, he managed to keep his cool, claiming he walked in with “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,” Stephen explained.

“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.”

Stephen went on to assure there are no hard feelings about missing out on NCIS, adding: “Retrospectively, I got the job that I was supposed to get, and everything does work out for a reason.”

NCIS: Origins premieres Monday, October 14 on CBS. NCIS is available to stream on Disney+.