NCIS: Gibbs Visits First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House

NCIS is back with an all-new episode Tuesday night — the first of three that will take us to the May 17 Season 13 finale and Michael Weatherly‘s departure from his role as Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo — featuring a very special guest.

First Lady Michelle Obama appears as herself in the Homefront episode as she welcomes Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and the wife of a Marine (Reiko Aylesworth) to the White House for a Joining Forces roundtable with military spouses. Joining Forces is a nationwide initiative calling all Americans to rally around service members, veterans and their families and support them through wellness, education and employment opportunities.

“Initially, she was going to come and film with us here in Los Angeles, and then her schedule didn’t allow that,” executive producer Gary Glasberg tells Parade.com. “They literally said, ‘Would you like to come and film at our house?’  We jumped at the opportunity. We are the first production to actually film inside the White House ever. The West Wing filmed outside, but we were given the opportunity to go in and the First Lady was fantastic.”

Glasberg says that the staff at NCIS has been aware of Joining Forces for a while and wanted to build a story around the initiative. In doing their research, the opportunity came up for the First Lady to be a part of it.

“I can’t tell you how it started,” Glasberg says, when asked if he called the White House or they contacted him. “It is just an organization that we always have been aware of because of some of the stories we tell. Then literally through conversations, it turned into, ‘Hey, what if we could have the First Lady?’ Again, it’s been pretty cool, and again, more than being about that, it’s about what this organization does, what they provide for military spouses and families.”

The Joining Forces initiative calling all Americans to rally around was launched in 2011 by First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, so it is currently celebrating its fifth anniversary.

Also in the Homefront episode, the through storyline of the manhunt for escaped former MI6 agent Jacob Scott (Vince Nappo) continues when Director Vance (Rocky Carroll) and Senior FBI Agent T.C. Fornell (Joe Spano) travel to London to meet with their British counterparts.

NCIS  airs Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.