Ned Dorneget died dramatically on NCIS, and it was actually all actor Matt Jones’ idea. NCIS Special Agent Ned Dorneget was assigned to the Navy Yard in D.C. as a member of the Cyber Operations Division in season 9, episode 10, “Sins of the Father”. The son of a CIA agent, Joanna Teague (Mimi Rogers), and a Detroit police officer who was killed in the line of duty, Dorneget was never going to be anything but a law enforcement officer. He’s a probationary agent when he first appears, but by the end of his arc, he’s a full-fledged agent.
Played by Matt Jones of Badger fame on Breaking Bad, Ned feels like a departure from what many of us have come to expect from the actor. A comic actor primarily, Jones got his start in small roles on shows like Gilmore Girls and Greek before breaking out with Breaking Bad. He’s always had an off-center feel about him, and Jones has used that perception well with his characters, making them charmingly quirky. That sense of humor is a real aspect of his personality, as evidenced by what he said to the NCIS showrunner before his character was killed off.
Ned Dorgenet Actor Matt Jones Told The NCIS Showrunner To Kill Him Off The Series
Jones Had Recently Secured A Big Sitcom Role In Mom
Though Dorneget is teased by the higher-ranking agents for most of his time on NCIS, he eventually earns their respect, and in season 12, he appears in episodes 22 “Troll” and 23 “The Lost Boys” as an NCIS ranking agent. In episode 23, Dorneget and Timothy McGee (Sean Murray) travel to Cairo, Egypt to look into the terrorist cell, The Calling, which uses video games to attract young kids to their operation. While staying at a hotel, McGee learns there’s a bomb threat at the hotel. The agents get everyone out, but Dorneget is too close to the blast zone when the bomb goes off.
Badly injured, he’s rushed to the hospital and sadly dies of his injuries. It’s a pretty terrible crime, even in terms of NCIS crimes. The shock of the bombing is lessened a bit when you learn it was actually Jones’ idea. Jones appeared on the October 15, 2024, episode of the Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch podcast and discussed why his character was selected to be killed off (via Spotify). Jones said that in the period he was occasionally appearing on NCIS, he was starring in various pilots that never got picked up.
Finally, the sitcom Mom got picked up, which meant he could no longer do NCIS. He told NCIS alums and podcast hosts, Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo,
“And so I ran into [then-showrunner] Gary Glasberg at a CBS event. I think I was literally standing with Emily Wickersham and Brian Dietzen at the Upfronts because I was hanging out with the NCIS people because everybody on CBS back in the day used to go to a party together. It was so much fun, and I was hanging out, and Gary came over and he’s like, ‘Oh, you got to come back.’ And I was like, ‘I’m on this sitcom now. I can’t come back. I want to, but what do we do?’ And he was like, I don’t know, what do you want to do?’ I was like, ‘Kill me!’ I was like, ‘Let’s kill me!’ And he’s like, ‘Oh my God, yeah, we should kill you.’ So it was my idea to die on the show. Such a stupid idea, by the way.”
Jones clearly has a sense of humor, as does Glasberg, apparently. With something much more meaty on his plate, it seems that Jones thought having his character killed off would be a laugh. It is a bit odd to request your own character be killed off, but I’m sure he took a bit of joy in being responsible for Dorneget’s demise.
Where Matt Jones Is Now
Matt Jones Is A Prolific Voice Actor
After he stopped appearing on NCIS, Matt Jones ended up in the cast of Mom as Baxter for 6 seasons. He also had a main role in the sitcom Bob Hearts Abishola as Douglas Wheeler.
Jones has done a lot of voice work over the years as well, voicing characters in Pig Goat Banana Cricket, Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh, and Hamster & Gretel, which is ongoing. He notably appeared in Brightburn in 2019 as Noah McNicol. Jones’ role as Ned Dorneget in NCIS may have been short-lived, but it was still memorable, death and all.