What To Know
- Brian Dietzen and Pauley Perrette, former NCIS co-stars, recently reunited, and he shared a photo.
- The long-running CBS drama continues to reference beloved former characters, including Perrette’s Abby in Season 23.
For 15 seasons, Brian Dietzen and Pauley Perrette starred alongside one another on NCIS; she was with the series from before it started, having been part of the backdoor pilot episodes on JAG, and he joined in Season 1 as a guest star, later upped to series regular. Then, she left near the end of Season 15. But on Sunday, June 7, Dietzen shared a photo of the two together again.
“Got to see @ellavos, @tinangelband and @cloverlin07 at @thehotelcafe and hang with @thepauleyp. That’s two shows we saw together in a week!” he wrote in the caption alongside the image. “Music is the best. So are good friends.” See the post below.
Perrette starred as forensic scientist Abby Sciuto alongside Dietzen’s Dr. Jimmy Palmer on NCIS, with the two frequently sharing scenes. But what Dietzen didn’t get to do for Perrette was write for her character; he first started penning episodes in Season 19. However, when TV Insider spoke with him in 2023 about the second episode he wrote, Abby was one of the characters he mentioned he wished he’d gotten to do so.
“I love so many of these characters. Obviously Gibbs [Mark Harmon], obviously Tony [Michael Weatherly], Ziva [Cote de Pablo], and Abby. All of these voices are just iconic,” he told us. “So if any one of these were to come back, I would be ecstatic to write for any of them.”
He continued, “Writing for Tony and being able to have those jokes and then having the know-it-all attitude but with the heart of gold underneath would be fantastic. To have Abby’s energy in there but also her heart that is as big as the sky. And of course Gibbs, whenever you want to really turn on some emotion in our show, you have Gibbs crack just a hair that we can see and it’s amazing entertainment. These of course are all personified by incredible actors. So being able to work with any of them again, I would welcome it. It would be wonderful.”
At the time, he also pointed out that the series continued to reference those characters who had left. And it did so in Season 23 with Abby. McGee (Sean Murray) mentioned a lip-reading program that he created as a birthday gift for Abby a couple years ago.
NCIS, Season 24, Fall 2026, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS