Jimmy Palmer has been a fan favorite on NCIS since season one, but he wasn’t always planned to be a member of the core crew.
NCIS star Brian Dietzen plays Jimmy Palmer, the charming chief medical examiner who has been on the show since the beginning. Palmer had a personal sorrow in Series 18 after the d3ath of his wife, Breena Palmer (played by Michelle Pierce). However, in the most recent CBS series, the forensic specialist is back at work with his team, however different it may appear after 18 years at NCIS.
After Gerald Jackson’s murd3r, Jimmy became Donald “Ducky” Mallard’s (David McCallum) assistant medical examiner (Pancho Demmings).
Ari Haswari (Rudolf Martin), Ziva David’s (Cote de Pablo) half-sister, assassinated him when he kidnapped Gerald and Ducky.
Jimmy initially appeared in the first season episode Split Decision, which aired in 2003.
As time passed, it was decided that Dietzen would be a series regular rather than a guest star.
However, there was no certainty that this would happen.
In reality, Dietzen has stated that he was only supposed to be on the NCIS set for one day.
“I was a one-day guest star,” the 43-year-old actor stated in an interview with Paul Semel.
“However, considering it was only a one-day job, I decided to make some extremely daring choices when I auditioned.”
“And they enjoyed it so much that it became a ten-year job.”
“Had it been for a major role, I would’ve had to test for the network, and if I had done that, I definitely would’ve made different choices,” Dietzen continued.
“And I doubt I would have gotten the job.”
With Dietzen only signing up for one day of filming as Palmer, could it be that he was meant to be another v1ctim, murd3red off shortly after Gerald’s murd3r?
While he remained on the show, Dietzen didn’t become a series regular until season 10, alongside Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, and Pauley Perrette.
Dietzen wasn’t the only one who wasn’t supposed to be on NCIS for so long.
Sean Murray, who plays Agent Timothy McGee, was also supposed to appear as a guest on the show at first.
“Sean’s character McGee was designed as a one-time thing,” said producer Frank Cardea. It was only meant to be a one-off episode.
“Sean became a regular a few episodes later.” He’s turned into our rock. And when we have challenging dialogue scenes, we assign them to Sean.”
Unfortunately for fans, NCIS will be taking a break from our screens.
As a result, there will be no new episode on CBS on Monday, November 15.
NCIS will instead return on Monday, November 29 for episode eight of season 19.