Brian Dietzen is a mainstay on NCIS, and now he’s taking fans inside the CBS franchise in a fun and fascinating way. The actor-writer is adding podcast host to his resume, as he helms NCIS: Partners & Probies with his costar Diona Reasonover. But this is no ordinary TV podcast: Brian and Diona are showcasing everyone who makes NCIS great.

In an interview with TVBrittanyF.com, Brian spoke about why he was interested in hosting an NCIS podcast and what he’s enjoyed about the experience. He also spoke about what NCIS: Partners & Probies has to offer that other TV podcasts don’t. Plus, find out about some of the upcoming episodes—and who’s on his dream guest list.

Brittany Frederick: TV show podcasts have become so common; what was it that excited you about an NCIS podcast? What did you think you could bring to it?

Brian Dietzen: This idea started kicking around about four years ago. Amy Reisenbach, then head of current programming at CBS, now president of CBS, came to Diona [Reasonover] and I and said, you guys are good friends. You’re fun to hang out with. I want you guys to do a rewatch podcast with us. And we kind of kicked around the idea over the next several years… We started looking at it thinking, if we do a rewatch podcast, we’re going to be doing this for the next 45 years, because it’s gonna take so much time to do. [Laughs.]

So we thought, what better way to celebrate NCIS than to celebrate the people that create it every single week? Whether it’s our show or any of our sister shows. This past year was the year where we got moved back to Tuesday nights and have an all-NCIS night, three hours straight. So we thought, this is the time to start this thing up and have a celebration of this NCIS universe—where it’s not just our show, the mothership, it’s all of our sister shows as well. And it’s been an absolute blast to do. It’s really been invigorating for me and renewing my passion about the show.

Once you decided to do the show, was there anyone that you knew you had to have as a guest, or anyone that you wanted to have on and get to know better?

Absolutely. There’s several, and some of them, I was even more excited to say, I want the world to meet this person, because it’s so fun to hang out with them. We get to do it weekly on set, but the world hasn’t met this person. I’m thinking of Jimmy Whitmore Jr, who is a director on our show, directs Origins, directed LA, directs a lot of the universe. He’s an absolute gas to hang out with, and it was so fun having him on. I also was excited for people to meet Susan Bluestein, who’s our original casting director on the show. {She] has amazing stories about the history of not only NCIS, but her career in Hollywood and New York.

But there’s certain people that I was very excited to have on, because I thought man, I just want to be able to ask them tons of questions—and some of them are my very close friends. Having Wilmer Valderrama on in the second episode, having Sean Murray on—who I’ve known for 23 years—it was just wonderful to get him on there and be able to ask him questions about about what makes him tick and what makes this show successful.

To that end, what can fans expect from NCIS: Partners & Probies? Can you go across the whole NCIS universe and talk to actors who aren’t on anymore, or some of the many great guest stars who’ve been part of the franchise, or how wide a scope is there?

Here’s my pitch. I want to be able to have people on who are maybe really well known people, that just happen to be really big fans of NCIS, because this show is called Partners & Probies, right? I’m a huge fan of a lot of the people that we’re interviewing. I’m a probie. I’m a fan of them. So if we have people on the show who are even just fans of the show—I know there’s a few different names in Hollywood, people go, I love that show. That’s my guilty pleasure is NCIS. Let’s have them on.

And also, to your point, how far back can we go? I would love to have some bigger name actors who have spent just one week on NCIS… They came on and did an episode, and now are huge movie stars. We’re talking Jesse Plemons, Glen Powell, Zac Efron—all these people that just spent a week with us two weeks with us, and have now moved on to other things. Why wouldn’t we have those folks on? It’d be great.

Is the way you interview people on the podcast shaped by all of the interviews you’ve done as an actor over your time on NCIS?

I would say that definitely informs how I interview other people. Someone like Sean that I’ve known forever, has become such a good friend… We’ll have our questions down on these little note cards, and I find at times I kind of lose track of even looking at them, because it just becomes this conversation with a good friend that I’ve known forever. What I love in looking back on some of these episodes is that it’s just very voyeuristic. You’re just sitting there watching three friends chat about work. To us that may be an everyday sort of thing, but to someone who’s been watching NCIS for a couple decades, that can be really exciting insight.

When you’re talking to a guest who’s not on NCIS, who may be from NCIS: Origins or elsewhere, are you asking for spoilers? Or what’s it like to talk to people who are in the same universe, but not the same show?

I too am a big fan of NCIS: Origins, and the only downside to that show for me is that I can’t go be on it, because we don’t live in the same [part of the] timeline. [Laughs.] But what’s cool about being on a show that’s in the same universe is that we all have similar experiences, because we’re dealing with a lot of same characters and same storytelling style. Origins is more serialized than we are, and oftentimes our show may have a lighter tone at times than theirs does, but we do come from the same creative forces and teams. They were created by David North and Gina Monreal.

So getting together with people, it’s almost like a family reunion, you know. Like you’re part of our family, but you live in a different state, and I don’t really know you very well, but there’s this DNA that we share. So getting together and just going, hey, does this ever happen on your set? That sort of thing has been really fun to do.

My favorite part of every single episode, whether we’re interviewing an actor, writer or director, is getting to know what brought them to this place. Whether it’s television veterans who’ve been working in this industry for 50 years or whether it’s people who are relative newcomers to the scene, getting their backstory. It really informs—like oh, that’s why, for example, Daniela Ruah played Kensi that way. This is what her background is, as far as an actor, and also just as a child, where she grew up. That insight has been really fun.

Do you learn things in these NCIS: Partners & Probies conversations that then inform your process, or give you food for thought?

So much. And also, the opposite is true too. I’ll be talking to a friend and and some of the questions I already know the answers to. I’m like yeah, of course, I know that about that person. And my producer is whispering in my ear saying, no one else knows that. You’ve got to ask them that thing, because that’s super-interesting and that’s a big part of their history. It’s like looking at the world through fresh eyes, because you’re saying hey, not everybody knows this about this person, and so let’s let everybody else in on some of these stories, some of these foundation elements and some of these secrets.

Even for the first episode—me and Diona were interviewing one another, and I feel like I know pretty much everything about her time on NCIS, because we’re very close friends. We talk a lot. And yet, despite that, there’s still stories that she told in that premiere episode I’ve never heard before, and perspective that I didn’t know, and she said the same goes for her with some of the stories I told as well. We went really deep on this first episode.

It might not be that incisive and deep on future ones. Sometimes they are, sometimes they’re much more fun and vibrant and all that sort of stuff. But the fun of hanging out with your friends and getting to ask real questions about real life—that’s something that we get to do in every single show, and I’ve really enjoyed it.

NCIS fans will naturally be expecting the cast interviews, but you mentioned earlier that Partners & Probies also spotlights the crew members in the franchise. How important was that for you, to talk to the people that viewers never get to see?

It has been awesome. There’s a lot of people whose names you recognize because you see it every single week on the credits, but you don’t know who they are. I loved having Don McGill on our show. He’s one of the co-reators of NCIS, but he hasn’t worked on NCIS since Episode 6 of the first year. He went on to run the television show Numb3rs, the television show CSI, and has been wildly successful with other endeavors. But it was great to hear about the the origin story of NCIS—those very beginning episodes and those episodes of JAG that gave birth to this entire franchise.

Talking to Susan Bluestein, who’s our original casting director—who cast Mark Harmon in this role, who cast Pauley Perrette, and seeing what the origins were back then of NCIS, but even going back further, what was her life like in the decades prior to this, in Los Angeles and in New York. It’s been really, really cool to get to sit down and have these wonderful perspectives—and quite varied perspectives between all these different people that have worked on our show. And then you realize, maybe this is one part of the secret sauce of NCIS, is that they have so many different people with so many different backgrounds all coming together to tell these stories.

What’s going to make you look back on NCIS: Partners & Probies and be glad you did this podcast? Is it how the podcast is received, or is it just the experience of doing it?

The journey is the destination on this one. I hope that people enjoy it, but to an extent, this has been like a big, big, big, thank you to the fans and to the probies of this show—saying hey, we just wanted to create something for you, that you can come visit each and every week and then, of course, will live on for as long as you want to check out these episodes.

The fans of the show are such a huge and integral part of this. They get to ask the questions as well… If you want to get involved, then start asking questions when we put out those prompts. Maybe you get to ask Wilmer what his favorite episode is, or what it was like playing Fez [on That ’70s Show] all those years ago or something. So it’s gonna be fun.

But I was saying to Diona a couple weeks ago, you know what’s been really making me happy lately I said the podcast; just getting together each week. We record two, three of them at a time, in one day. But getting together with people. Each one of them—irrespective of their job, their position—NCIS has changed their life, and they’ve dedicated their life in some way to this endeavor. Being able to spend time with people like that and have fun and laugh and just enjoy ourselves, it’s really validating, and it very, very much reminds me what rare air we’re breathing over here.

NCIS: Partners & Probies is available now on Apple Podcasts and other podcast platforms, with new episodes releasing Tuesdays. NCIS airs Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. Photo Credit: Robert Voets/Courtesy of CBS.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.