Dietzen recalls the “heart attack” of a scene on the inaugural episode of his new, “NCIS”-centric podcast with costar Diona Reasonover, “Partners & Probies.”

NCIS star Brian Dietzen recalls Mark Harmon and Pauley Perrette saving him from showrunner’s intense challenge

Dietzen recalls the "heart attack" of a scene on the inaugural episode of his new, "NCIS"-centric podcast with costar Diona Reasonover, "Partners & Probies."

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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March 3, 2026 11:00 a.m. ET

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Brian Dietzen and Pauley Perrette on 'NCIS'. Credit:

Monty Brinton/CBS via Getty

- Brian Dietzen recalled a formative experience from the *NCIS *set in which Mark Harmon and Pauley Perrette helped him pass one of series creator Donald P. Bellisario's intense tests.

- The scene pushed him from almost having "a heart attack" to realizing his costars were "family," he revealed on the first episode of his new podcast with Diona Reasonover, *NCIS: Partners & Probies*.

- "Families have been created" on the *NCIS *set, Dietzen tells EW ahead of *NCIS*' midseason return. It's true for him, Reasonover, and "pretty much every one of our cast members."

After 23 seasons on the air, a role on *NCIS** *would be any actor's dream. But it was once Brian Dietzen's nightmare.

Tuesday marks not just the midseason return of *NCIS*, but the launch of Dietzen and his on his-screen morgue-mate Diona Reasonover's new podcast *NCIS: Partners & Probies*. CBS, which has aired *NCIS *since 2003 and sponsors the new podcast for the procedural's obsessives, described the new venture in a release as a weekly opportunity to "[pull] back the curtain on the world of *NCIS* with revealing, heartfelt, and often humorous conversations with cast, crew, creatives and real-world experts."

The inaugural episode features Dietzen and Reasonover, who have appeared on the series since seasons 1 and 15, respectively, interviewing each other about the very fundamentals of their places on the show.

Dietzen's chief medical examiner Jimmy Palmer is one of only two remaining characters that provide links back to the very origins of the series, the other being Sean Murray's senior field agent, Timothy McGee. It's hard to imagine Dietzen as anything other than a rock for the constantly evolving series and its shifting cast, but he tells Reasonover about a "heart attack" of an early experience that nearly shook his confidence away.

"There was this one time where, in the third or fourth season, Ducky [David McCallum] was kidnapped or something, and Jimmy needs to explain these X-rays to Gibbs [Mark Harmon] and Abby [Pauley Perrette], and maybe DiNozzo [Michael Weatherly]," Dietzen explained.

It was just a "little, tiny scene," Dietzen recalled, until creator and then-showrunner Donald P. Bellisario threw a massive wrench into the works. The super-producer "sends down new pages" containing complex and hyper-specific dialogue for Jimmy — "I'm talking about how Neolithic man ground down his teeth, and that's how you can tell this and this and that." The actor had mere minutes to internalize it all before shooting again.

"I'm about to have a heart attack. Like, a panic attack. Harmon's head pokes out of his trailer, 'Brian, you need help?' Weatherly's head pokes out, 'D, you're good? You want some help?' I was like, 'Okay, thanks guys,'" he recalled.

Though it was Perrette who ultimately proved instrumental in Dietzen catching the sudden curveball, it was Harmon who explained why it'd even been thrown in the first place. "I'm trying to remember the words and Harmon goes, 'You know why he's doing this, right?... He's calling your number. He wants to see what you've got,'" Dietzen shared.

Meredith Eaton, Pauley Perrette, Mark Harmon, and Brian Dietzen on 'NCIS'.

Sonja Flemming/CBS via Getty

Before Reasonover joined in 2017 as junior medical examiner Kasie Hines, Perrette played Jimmy's main partner in crime fighting in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service's morgue.

When the two returned to set, Dietzen recalled, "Right before they say action, they go, 'All right, everybody's set?' And then Pauley takes my lines out of her pocket and she tapes it to the bottom of the camera mat box, so it's just hanging right there. So the first take, I don't miss a word because I'm pointing at it. I'm literally reading my lines."

Reasonover and Dietzen shared in a hearty laugh at the cunning trick. He remembered the episode's director praising him for his performance, and it clearly went over well with Bellisario, who has kept him around for another 20-odd seasons.

Dietzen identifies that moment as the one in which "a lot of my anxiety started just kind of coming down... because I remember thinking, 'These people are here for me.' You know? These people are a family here, we want to see each other succeed."

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Dietzen sat down with * *ahead of the *Partners & Probies *premiere to tease what fans can expect from this new, parallel season of *NCIS *content adding to the heap of *NCIS: Origins* and *NCIS: Sydney*, which air back-to-back with the flagship series every Tuesday.

"I mean, I was a guest star. I was supposed to stay for one episode, and it's turned into a 23-year career for me on the show," Dietzen recalls.

Brian Dietzen and Diona Reasonover for the 'NCIS: Partners & Probies' podcast.

Robert Voets/CBS

"Families have been created, you know? My children weren't born when I started this show, and my daughter graduated high school last year," he explains. "[Wilmer Valderrama] and his wife started their family on this show — same with pretty much every one of our cast members."

And the same with Reasonver, who married writer and actor Patricia Villetto in 2018, the same year she made her *NCIS *debut. Dietzen says the series has been a breeding ground for the creation of "extremely close friends," including himself and Reasonver.

"Why are Kasie and Jimmy such close friends? Why are they joined at the hip as the lab coat crew? Well, it's because Diona and I hang out a bunch, and we work really well together." It's those bonds that Dietzen promises he and Reasonver will bring to *NCIS *fans each week on the series' new official podcast.

*NCIS *airs Tuesdays on CBS at 8 p.m. ET/PT, while *NCIS: Partners & Probies *drops new episodes at the start of each same day.

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