THE MORTON REPORT: Q & A with Brian Dietzen, NCIS's Jimmy Palmer
By Mindy Peterman
February 7, 2012
Brian Dietzen plays Jimmy Palmer, assistant to David McCallum’s character Ducky Mallard, on CBS's hit TV show NCIS. Palmer, as Dietzen describes him, “assists on autopsies, assists at crime scenes and anything that has to do with the dead body. He will help out Ducky as much as he can and in the process generally makes inappropriate comments and quite often gets the stinkeye from Gibbs [Mark Harmon].”
Dietzen has been with the massively popular show for eight years and when he talks about those years, it seems like he hasn’t regretted a single moment. This week marks the airing of the show's 200th episode, and Jimmy Palmer fans will want to take note: to make the episode even more noteworthy, a very special surprise is in store for you...
... Q: You began on NCIS as a guest star and now, eight years later, you’re a regular on the show. What has it been like being on NCIS this long and how has your character changed over time?
Brian Dietzen: "Originally I was only supposed to be employed for a day. Every actor knows that you always hope for the best and that you’ll be back. So I was back the next week and the next week and eight years later I’m still working [on the show].
It’s interesting. From the first day I don’t know if I would have made different choices for my character had I known it was going to go for several years. I made kind of insecure and peevish choices for the character because I thought it was only going to be a one-day thing. Eight years later I’m trying to keep that up a little bit but have the character grow as well.
I think the cool part about the show is that each one of those characters stays inherently in their place in their role. And then they grow incrementally in small spurts here and there. Eight years afterwards we’ve gotten to see Jimmy Palmer stand up to his father-in-law or get engaged and start making moves toward a little bit more confidence than what he had in the beginning.
On the whole, the character will always be Jimmy. [When] people say, ‘That’s a Jimmy Palmer type of thing,’ you kind of know what that means. He’s insecure..."
