Mike Farrell has made his return to television after seven years.
The actor, 86, who portrayed Captain B.J. Hunnicutt on M*A*S*H, guest starred on Season 9, Episode 10 of “9-1-1.”
During Thursday night’s episode, Farrell played Bill Schneider, a man on his way to pick up his girlfriend up at the airport. However, his son Andrew (Jason Gray-Stanford) is concerned his dad is being catfished.
Before appearing on the ABC series, Farrell portrayed Judge Miles Deakin in two episodes of “NCIS” in 2019.
The producer also starred in 2018’s “Impeachment: American Crime Story” and was in seven episodes of “The Red Road” in 2014 and 2015.
Now, Farrell is set to star in the upcoming movie “The Strawberry.”
“It’s really a very thoughtful film,” Farrell told People in 2025. “I play a character who’s gotten a diagnosis that’s gonna mean he can’t survive with the disease and what the process is to go through with your family … and it’s a very, very deeply thought through script by a man who went through that with his father.”
While chatting with the outlet, the activist reflected on starring in M*A*S*H, which ran for eleven seasons from 1972 to 1983.
“It stands out in my life’s experience as one of the great periods,” Farrell gushed. “The combination of what we were doing, what we were talking about, what we were showing, the blood and guts level of what we were dealing with, and the reality of what was going on around us in the world at the time contributed to a really special mix of emotions and thoughts and principles and people.”
The sitcom, which also starred Loretta Swit (Margaret Houlihan), Alan Alda (Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce), Jamie Farr (Maxwell Q. Klinger), Wayne Rogers (Trapper John McIntyre) Gary Burghoff (Radar O’Reilly) and Harry Morgan (Sherman T. Potter), followed key personnel in the US Army’s Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War from 1950 to 1953.
Farrell joined the show in 1975 at the start of season four. He replaced Rogers’ character, Trapper John McIntyre.
In 2025, Farrell reflected on his first day on set.
“Alan called me and he said would you have dinner with me and we sat for hours which was just like paradise for me to listen to this guy and ask him questions and have him tell me what he wanted from the show,” he told That’s Classic TV at the time. “It was just fabulous. So I felt, ‘Okay. I am at least okay with him.’”
Farrell continued, “Then I went onto the set the first day thinking ‘I don’t know. How am I going to feel?’ The first person that came up stuck out his hand was Gary Burghoff and he said, ‘Mike, we’re really thrilled to have you here. Loretta was next and then Bill Christopher and then Jamie. And they just let me know that I was welcomed and we are all going to go on together.”
Swit passed away at age 87 in May.
During an interview in 2004, the actress praised her “M*A*S*H” character as “unique,” even if “nobody appreciated her.”
“She was unique at the time and in her time, which was the ’50s, when the Korean War was happening,” Swit elaborated. “And she became even more unique, I think, because we allowed her to continue to grow — we watched her evolve. I don’t think that’s ever been done in quite that way.
“She was the head nurse, and her ambition was to be the best damn nurse in Korea, and I tried to help her achieve that,” she noted. “That woman was so lonely, and she was trying to do such a good job. And nobody appreciated her.”
