‘NCIS’ Star Teases Important Character’s Arrival

NCIS fans, get ready to meet Victoria Palmer. Ahead of the Feb. 28 return of the CBS naval drama, actor Brian Dietzen teased that his character, Dr. Jimmy Palmer, would be introducing his young daughter Victoria to the show. “Who’s ready to meet Victoria?” Dietzen captioned a photo of himself and the young actor playing his daughter sitting in NCIS chairs on set taken from behind.

The NCIS Medical Examiner revealed the tragic loss of his wife Breena to COVID-19 in a February 2021 episode, sharing at the time that he was struggling to parent his daughter, who at the time was just a few months shy of turning 6. In 2022, the show revealed Victoria had become a recipient of The Leroy Jethro Gibbs Scholarship Fund, but the little girl has yet to make an on-screen appearance.

Last year, Dietzen opened up to Entertainment Tonight about his character’s tragic loss amid the pandemic, saying Palmer was “trying to keep whatever happiness he can, trying to say, ‘Hey, my glass is half overflowing here. I’m doing really great,’” even if the audience could see that wasn’t exactly the case. “He’s doing whatever he can just keep his head above water,” the actor continued. “But there’s only so long that that can happen before there’s going to be a certain breaking point.”

Dietzen said that because Breena’s death was before the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine, it was an “unfortunate reality” that reflected the experience of many medical professionals around the world who had forced “proximity to the disease.” He continued, “I think that was one of the interesting and obviously heartbreaking things about this disease that we’ve all seen, is these people on the front line were working as doctors who are working as EMTs who have had to go through heartbreak on their own, and yet they’re asked to just continue working because if they stop working, then we don’t have our frontline there for us anymore.”

“In many ways, this episode turned out to be a recognition of people who have lost others during this pandemic,” Dietzen reflected. “If you wanted to get more specific about it, it’s about our frontline workers and about people who have helped us deal with this pandemic going through their own trials and continuing to show up for the rest of us.” NCIS returns Monday, Feb. 28 at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.