Watch the Video: How Catherine Bell Was Cast in JAG
Here it is, straight from Patrick's own channel, The Patrick LabyorSheaux. It runs 2 minutes and 19 seconds, so it costs you less time than making a cup of coffee. Press play, watch the whole thing, and then come back, because a casting story like this one lands better when you hear it in Patrick's own voice first.
Video: How Catherine Bell Was Cast in JAG on YouTube — embedded from the creator's own show.
Every JAG fan knows Mac. Lt. Col. Sarah Mackenzie, the tough, sharp, fiercely loyal Marine lawyer who stood toe to toe with Harm for nine seasons, is one of the great characters in classic television. What almost nobody realises is that Catherine Bell was on JAG before she was Mac, playing somebody else entirely, and that somebody else did not survive. This little clip is the story of how she came back from that, and why the second chance turned into a career-defining role.
What This Clip Is
As the video page puts it, Patrick shares the behind-the-scenes story of how Catherine Bell was cast in JAG, from her early career to landing the role of Lt. Col. Sarah "Mac" Mackenzie. The page also drops the hook that makes the clip worth your two minutes: Bell originally came to JAG for a different role before she was cast as Mac, and Mac went on to define her career and lead to her starring in The Good Witch. If you love classic television casting stories, this is exactly your kind of clip.
That is the whole appeal of Patrick's short videos. There is no panel, no interviewer steering him, no ten-minute setup. It is just Patrick, telling you something that actually happened in the business, the way an old friend tells a story across a table. And this one has a special edge, because Patrick was not watching JAG from the outside. He was on it. As Lt. Bud Roberts Jr., he served alongside Mac for years, so when he tells you how she got the part, he is telling you about a castmate, not a stranger.
Watch it first, because the fun of a story like this is hearing it in his own words, in his own timing. Then read on, because there is a lot packed around this little clip that is worth knowing, including the twist most fans have never heard and the handwritten letter that changed everything.
The Twist Most Fans Never Heard: She Was Already on JAG, and She Was Dead
Here is the part that stops JAG fans in their tracks. Before she was Mac, Catherine Bell appeared in the first season of JAG as Lt. j.g. Diane Schonke, a Navy officer Harm had been in love with. The catch, as Bell herself has told it, was that the character was already gone: her big moment in the episode was a flashback, and Harm's lost love arrived in a body bag. She had a handful of scenes, a three-line part by some accounts, and a character who was, by design, dead.
Then the show itself nearly died too. NBC cancelled JAG after that first season. When CBS picked it up and restructured the series, the new version needed a female Marine lawyer to star opposite David James Elliott's Harm, following Tracey Needham's exit. That character was Sarah Mackenzie. Bell auditioned for the role, and she won it. She starred as Mac from season 2 onward, and she stayed with the role until the series ended in 2005. The dead girlfriend from season 1 had become the co-lead of the whole show.
That is why this clip matters to classic TV fans. It is not just a trivia fact. It is a reminder of how brutal and how random this business can be. One year you are a guest player whose character is killed off before the show is cancelled. The next, you are the face of the revived series. And if you want another short, true story in the same spirit, the 98-second Hollywood Brunch clip on this site works exactly the same way.
The Extra Story: The Handwritten Letter That Saved Her Career
Here is the extra story, and it is the one that makes the casting tale unforgettable. Bell has told this one herself, on a panel at Motor City Comic Con reported by ScreenRant in December 2025, and it starts at the lowest point of her acting life. The night before she found out she had the role of Mac, she sat at her dining table in tears, staring at a stack of bills, telling her husband she could not do it anymore. She was borrowing money from her mother to pay the rent. She was, in her own telling, ready to quit.
Her husband talked her out of it. He told her she was so close, that they had almost got there. And before the call came, Bell did one old-fashioned thing that almost nobody does anymore: she wrote a handwritten letter to JAG creator Don Bellisario, asking him to consider her for a lead part in the revived second season. She dropped it in the mail, the old way, on paper.
The next morning, the phone rang. It was Bellisario himself, and he told her he was glad she had written, because nobody writes notes anymore, and the note had reminded him of her. He was not sure about making Mac look like the earlier character, but he was willing to see. She got the part, and the rest is television history: nine seasons as Mac, a character so loved that Bell brought her back alongside David James Elliott for a multi-episode arc on NCIS: Los Angeles in 2019 and 2020.
That is the kind of story that makes Patrick's little clip make sense. The casting of Mac was not just a smart hire. It was a second chance earned by a handwritten letter, sent on the night a struggling actor nearly walked away. A short story told by a man who shared the set with her is worth hearing out, because he knows what that second chance turned into. If you want the long version of Patrick at his best, the full Barbara Crampton conversation is another actor telling her own story, from carnival kid to scream queen to producer.
Why Patrick Is the Right Man to Tell It
Patrick and Catherine did not just cross paths. They worked together for years on JAG, he as Bud Roberts and she as Mac, and that shared history is what gives this clip its warmth. He is not repeating gossip. He is telling a story about a colleague, from inside the same show, in the same plainspoken style he brings to every one of these short videos. If you only know Patrick from one role, it is probably Andy Garvey on Little House on the Prairie, which he played from 1977 to 1981, before he grew up and put on a uniform as Bud Roberts on JAG, a role he later brought back on NCIS.
Today he hosts his own show, The Patrick LabyorSheaux, and he runs Working Actors School, which teaches actors what it is really like on a set, in a way that is practical and fun instead of scary. That is also why his short stories land the way they do. Every one of them is a little lesson in disguise, from a man who has spent fifty years learning how this business treats people. The video page even points viewers to the full episode this clip comes from, so if the two minutes leave you wanting more, the longer conversation is one click away.
That is the whole point of this page. Some stories need room, and some just need a man who was there, telling it straight, in just over two minutes. This one earns its title, and the letter story gives you a reason to keep following. Watch it, send it to the friend who still quotes JAG, and come back for the next video. And if you want the full Patrick shelf on this site, settle in for the full Ike Eisenmann conversation, two old friends talking until the real stories come out.
