How This NCIS Actor Got Invited into the Writers’ Room

Published: June 19, 2026

By Michaela Gordoni

When Brian Dietzen’s co-star David McCallum started to appear in fewer episodes, Dietzen took the opportunity to write an episode or two.

“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,’” said Dietzen, who plays Jimmy Palmer.

So he wrote 10-12 pages and sent them over to Binder. His co-star, Diona Reasonover, wrote the episode, “Turkey Trot,” which she was grateful for producer Mark Horowitz’s help with.

She told Horowitz, “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.”

Horowitz told Dietzen and Reasonover, “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 was happy people were excited to see what they could do and with the finished results.

Wilmer Valderrama hinted that Season 24, which comes out in October, will “shake” things up.

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In the Season 23 finale, his character, Nick Torres, comes head-to-head with McGee’s son Mateo. They each reach for their guns, and a gunshot is heard.

“How about this? Next season, there’s some major changes and there are some major additions,” Valderrama said. “What does that mean for Torres? I can only hope that he makes it out alive.”

Binder confirmed that one of the two men “was hit” during the shootout but will stay alive.

“I sort of had my fill this season, all of us, of killing people. So I can rule that out,” Binder explained. “And also, there’s not a lot of fun there. When someone’s dead, they’re dead.”

If it’s not a death, what could the shake-up be? We’ll have to wait till October to find out.

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