The Real Explanation For Linda Hunt’s Absence From NCIS

Hunt’s character, Lange, is the manager of operations for the L.A. NCIS unit. And she’s quite the character. Not just a speaker of several languages, pilot, and mountain climber, but also an Olympic medalist! Yes, Lange won a gong for rifle shooting: skills which have helped her out of the odd sticky situation.

But Hunt is no spring chicken, and fans began to question — during a Season 12 that saw her only appearing intermittently — whether her retirement was nearing. And this suspicion was only reinforced by Season 13, in which she only showed up for the opening episode. Was this the end of the much-loved character?

In Hunt’s early years, it would have been a great surprise to her folks that she would grow up to be a Hollywood star. In her infancy, living in late-1940s Connecticut, she showed signs that she wasn’t yet showing the kind of physical coordination and fine motor skills usually displayed by children her age. In fact, doctors believed that she was destined for an institution.

But mom Elsie was not putting up with that kind of talk. She and her husband Raymond put theater and books to use in creating an environment in which Hunt could develop. And it worked: by the time she was school age, she’d nearly caught up. Her parents didn’t stop there, and Hunt would later acknowledge how much they’d put into her upbringing.

All the same, school was a difficult experience for the future star. She had not grown very tall and still had some problems with learning, and the other children were merciless. The young Hunt also struggled with alienation after a teacher had mistreated her, leaving her feeling, she later recounted to CBS News, as though she wasn’t clever enough for school.

Of course, being bullied was unpleasant, but it did leave Hunt with a powerful determination. She told variety website The Daily Beast in 2017, “I was a very determined kid… This happens to kids who are different in any way.” In due course, a diagnosis of dwarfism made it clear why Hunt hadn’t grown much.

That determination would stand Hunt in good stead as she pursued her vocation: acting. She’d always wanted to be an actor, ever since she’d seen a production of Peter Pan on Broadway, in which Mary Martin had shown her how magical acting could be. She told magazine The Bulletin that the experience had left her intent on becoming a “high priestess of theater.”

As ever, Hunt’s parents were supportive, although they did suggest that she made sure that she had other skills to support herself. In fact, that turned out to be good advice, as her early years in New York proved very difficult. She found the whole process of getting started in theater way beyond her at first.

The young wannabe actor focused on building a circle of friends and working backstage, so that she was at least in touch with the theater. She also tried to have her dwarfism treated, although without success. In the end, wracked with self-doubt, she went back to mom and dad’s, tail between her legs.

That might have spelled the end of Hunt’s hopes, had a figure from her past not stepped in. Her former drama coach fired up her passion once more. She told The Bulletin in 1991, “My acting coach reminded me again about the importance of acting in my life and the knowledge that this was my gift.”

This was enough to spur Hunt on, and she started to audition. This time, her foray into the theater world was a success. She started appearing regularly in a range of plays. Among the writers in whose works she featured were Eugene O’Neill, Bertolt Brecht, and Tennessee Williams. And the critics loved her, with award nominations beginning to come her way.

But making it was not enough for Hunt, as she later told The Bulletin. She described this time of her life by saying, “I’m working more than I thought I’d be. I am not working as much as I’d like.” Roles would pass her by for various reasons, and she’d suffer from depression as she tried to deal with the rejection. She wouldn’t give up, though.

And it’s just as well Hunt didn’t. In 1984 she scored the role of Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously. Undaunted by being cast as a member of the opposite sex, she turned in a stellar performance. So good was she in the film that she would take out the year’s Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Hunt insisted that she wasn’t simply impersonating a man, even though she did get a new hairstyle so that she could pass as one. But however you characterized her performance, people loved it. Now Hunt had a new level of fame, way beyond what she might have expected, and toiling away in the theater was now a thing of the past.

No, now Hunt was on a whole new level. She’d had film roles before, notably in Fame and Popeye, but she was now a star. She toyed with Kevin Kline’s affections in Silverado, and used her diminutive stature to great comic effect as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s physical opposite in Kindergarten Cop. In each role, she brought a power and range that cinephiles kept lapping up.

On television too, Hunt would play women with power, easily able to operate in men’s worlds. She told the New York Post newspaper in 2012, “People are always casting me for what they call my authority.” And she found it easy enough to portray since she’d learned to compensate for her height with steel in her character.

But the well of good roles started to run dry in the 2000s, and Hunt began to find what was on offer uninteresting. She told The Daily Beast, “I began to get some pretty boring stuff for a while: children’s films, family films, which I never felt comfortable with.” It started to seem as though people called her in to audition for almost any role, and that didn’t sit well with her.

If work wasn’t going quite the way Hunt wanted, her private life certainly was. In 2008 she tied the knot to long-time partner Karen Kline. They’d been a couple since 1987 but the change in the law that allowed same-sex marriage prompted them to get hitched, although she recognized that it was only a legal union in California.

Kline shared with CBS News in 2013 that she’d loved Hunt’s clothes on their first meeting. She said, “I was kind of struck [by] Linda’s corduroys.” For her part, Hunt emphasized their “age gap.” She said, “Karen’s six years younger, but I forgive her daily. I do, I forgive you for being younger.”

But domestic bliss was not enough for Hunt, and even getting plenty of work didn’t leave her satisfied. She moved into doing voice work, and perhaps she had decided that the time had come to start thinking about retirement. Then the producers of NCIS: Los Angeles called, and boy, did they have a role for her!

It wouldn’t be surprising if Hunt had thought that this would just be another role where she’d be bored. Instead, the character fitted her like a well-made shoe. Hetty Lange is tough and radiates power, just like Hunt herself. Show writer Shane Brennan told The Daily Beast, “It became apparent pretty quickly that Linda was something special and that the audience was responding to her.”

And it thrilled Hunt that she now appealed to the very people who would once upon a time have been torturing her. She told The Daily Beast, “When I was growing up… I was so miserable because I elicited so much teasing and meanness from my teenage cohorts. These days, there are some teenagers out there who actually think that what Hetty is doing is cool and what Linda Hunt is doing is cool… I love that.”

The passion for her character did shock Hunt, as she explained, although she did welcome it. She said, “I wasn’t looking for anything. I’m now 66. At this time in my life, that this has come along, feels just like a gift. The heavens opened up and just handed me a little something to get me into my 70s.”

But Hunt was an older woman, and naturally she’d started to think about her retirement. She’d told CBS News in 2013, “I look forward to a time when I don’t have to work any more, which is close at hand, I think.” Dreams of more time with her pet dogs and enjoying her spare-time activities, such as writing and reading, flourished.

One reason for eyeing an easier life was that Hunt was now struggling with the stress that was part and parcel of the job. She’d told the Daily Beast in 2017, “At this time in my life, I’d rather just not [act]… I’d rather be the person who has more time to stretch, more time to think, more time to reach out to other people.”

Despite that feeling, the pocket dynamo stayed a central part of the NCIS: Los Angeles cast with no sign of retirement until Season 12. Then she wasn’t much seen in the show at all. But the reason wasn’t that she’d quit acting! It was that she was being kept safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The show’s bigwigs had recognized that the pandemic posed extra risks to Hunt because of her age. R. Scott Gemmill, the series showrunner, told the TVLine website, “We’re doing everything we can to keep everyone safe, and Linda — now age 77 — is a little extra special in terms of how we have to look out for her.”

The show’s creative team found quite an interesting path to keeping Hunt safe during the pandemic. They asked her not to work on the set with the other actors. Instead, they penned a story for Hetty Lange that would mean that she’d call into the NCIS office over a video link.

But Hunt had already been something of a scarce presence in previous years. That was because in 2018 she suffered an accident in her car that put her in hospital for a few days. Although she wasn’t badly hurt, the incident did mean that she needed a long break from the show.

In fact, Lange went missing for nearly an entire season. Yes, the tenth iteration of NCIS: Los Angeles went ahead without Hunt, pretty much, as she was written as taking a sabbatical. And when she did return, she did it in style, plowing a car through a wall! Luckily, she had been able to face up to what had happened with a light heart.

But Season 12 saw her disappear again, at least in person. The fans started to wonder whether Hetty would ever come back to the show. Appearances on the video link just didn’t seem to satisfy their thirst for a character who’d become very much a fan favorite. And Hunt’s on-screen persona didn’t give away much, keeping quiet about where she was and what she was doing.

But Gemill noted to TVLine that things changed as Season 12 wore on. He said, “Linda had both her vaccines, she was feeling great, and she came back [for the finale]. And she was so happy to be back. She had been gone for so long and hadn’t really interacted with anyone, so she was just so thrilled to be back on set.”

It was fair to wonder whether Hunt would be coming back for Season 13. After all, she’d been saying back in 2013 that she didn’t want the role to last forever. Did the long break due to the pandemic mean that her return for the finale was actually her swansong?

Well, no. When Season 13 kicked off, there was Lange, small and fierce, in its premiere. But if fans were hopeful that this meant that she’d be a full-time presence, they would be disappointed. No sooner had she turned up than off she went, back to Syria where she needed to complete her mission.

That was not the end, though, as Gemmill explained to Parade magazine. He said, “She was in at the beginning of this season, and then we had her disappear. The plan is to follow that up next [season] with some reveal. We’ve pitted her a little bit against Callen in terms of what he went through as a child, so that’s something we’re very eager to explore and have fun with.”

Gemmill continued, “We saw a little bit of that confrontation earlier this year, but before they could really have it out, she disappeared again. That’ll be a focus for us in Season 14 when we come back.” So it seems that the plan, at least, is for Hunt’s absence to be temporary.

The fans went wild when they heard that Hunt would be back for Season 13. One wrote, “Happy Birthday, can’t wait for you to come back to NCIS LA miss you!” on Twitter. Another tweeted, “Happy Birthday, Linda! We miss Hetty! Please come back from whatever mission you’re on, Hetty! NCIS LA needs your sharp wit & mysterious ways!”

The fans aren’t the only people who love Hunt. Eric Christian Olsen — Marty Deeks in the show — told the Cinemablend website in 2022, “I think Linda Hunt is the ground that Hetty stands on. The foundation that gives it that gravitas comes from deep within the bones of Linda Hunt. I think that’s why it’s such a powerful character. I think that she’s the glue that holds the group together.”

But Hunt’s continuing absence from Season 13 left the fans more and more worried about her future. Despite what Gemmill had said, they need convincing that the star has not called it a day. At the time of writing, Season 14 is yet to begin, but whether it will include Linda Hunt remains a question that we’ll have to wait to see answered.