What To Know
- NCIS is known for the orange walls of the squad room.
- Former executive producer Mark Horowitz explained how they came to be on an episode of the NCIS: Partners & Probies podcast.
- Diona Reasonover also shared how she accidentally brought that set design home with her.
“Wow, I’m not a big fan of the orange. And the glare off that skylight’s ridiculous,” Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) said, while getting a look at the squad room in the flashbacks in NCIS Season 8’s “Baltimore,” to Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), who brought him to HR and the Agent Applicant Division.
The orange walls are a staple of NCIS, and when former executive producer Mark Horowitz joined series stars Brian Dietzen (Palmer) and Diona Reasonover (Kasie) for the Tuesday, June 16, episode of their NCIS: Partners & Probies podcast, he remarked on the “correct colors” on the set.
Horowitz then revealed the “history” of how the walls ended up being orange. “I’ve heard a lot of complaints,” he shared. But he thinks it “gives our show a certain distinction” since no other show has it.
“Don [Bellisario] was looking for a space, and in his mind originally, that squad room was a small space. It was not a large space. It was a small kind of tech-y kind of thing. And we went out and looked at some various locations,” the former EP recalled of the two JAG episodes that served as the backdoor pilot. “We hadn’t built a set yet. We went to the old Epson building in El Segundo, and it looked a lot like our squad room. It actually had a big pyramid ceiling that was translucent, and the light came down and and kind of focused on the center of the room and the walls around it kind of fell off. So, even from a lighting standpoint, it had that feeling and it was this color.”
Once NCIS was picked up as its own series, “we had to build something that ended up looking a lot like that. And we did and that is why these particular colors were chosen for that,” he continued.
Reasonover then revealed that the color of the walls stuck with her so much that she brought it home with her. “I accidentally painted my living room this color, and my wife hasn’t realized it yet, but as soon as I went back to work after hiatus, I was like, I’m in so much trouble,” she said. “It was subconscious. It’s that emotional memory. … I bring my work home.”
NCIS, Season 24, Fall 2026, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS