Brian Dietzen Reveals How He Started Writing for the Show

The stars of NCIS work behind the scenes as well. Rocky Carroll has directed over 20 episodes of the series. Brian Dietzen and Diona Reasonover, who host the NCIS: Partners & Probies podcast, still releasing new episodes between seasons, have written episodes — four (co-written with Scott Williams and Jesse Stern) and one, respectively. And the podcast’s latest guest, former NCIS executive producer Mark Horowitz turned the tables on the host to ask them about writing for the series in the Tuesday, June 16, episode.

“Writing came up for me when David McCallum was starting to work a little bit less and less and I was getting some scripts and I remember saying to Steve Binder at one point, who was running our show alongside Frank Cardea, ‘You know, it feels like a lot of my dialogue, it feels like an elderly Scottish man is saying it and it feels like maybe we could Jimmy up this thing,’ and Steve on his way out the door goes, ‘Hey, look, if you think you can do better, just do it. Alright, you’re a writer. You’ve written us a feature. Just do it.’ And he left and I was like, ‘OK, cool.’”

Dietzen then wrote 10-12 pages of scenes and called Binder the next day about what he’d said. “He goes, ‘Oh, yeah. I meant to call you. I was kind of short with you. I didn’t mean to be an a**hole, my apologies,’” the star recalled. “I said, ‘No, no. I wrote some pages for you.’ And so I sent them over to him and he goes, ‘Oh, do you want to write an episode?’ And I said, “Yeah, sure. I will.’”

Reasonover pointed out that Dietzen also had “some great ideas” for Season 14’s “Keep Going,” and he acknowledged that he did have “a lot of input on that one.”

Reasonover then turned to Horowitz and told him that with the episode she wrote, “Turkey Trot,” in his final season with the show, “was my first time getting to see you in your EP giving notes glory because you had some great ideas that really, for me, turned the script around and that really made it a lot better. So, I was really happy about that.”

Dietzen also pointed out that what allows them to write for the series is that neither is working the full eight days it takes to film an episode. “We’re working three days or sometimes four,” he explained.

Horowitz agreed, but made sure to praise their talent as well. “It was interesting when the word went out that both of you were going to be writing on the show. In some circumstances, that might make people’s heads explode, but in this particular circumstance, people were like, ‘Oh, yeah. Yeah. Can they write? Oh, yeah. They’re available? Great. Get them to work,’” he remembered. “There was a need and people were very excited about it. And you did great shows.”

NCIS, Season 24, Fall 2026, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS