A bespectacled Kasie Hines interrupts Donald “Ducky” Mallard as she shakes the hand of three of NCIS’s agents, naming each one in rapid succession. She’s a graduate assistant but harbors enough confidence to take over the job she would later inherit. Moments later, she is unceremoniously introduced to the first case she will work with the team. Kasie’s knowitallism earns her equal amounts of respect and vexation. This is especially evident when agent Leroy Gibbs waltz’s in only to be suckered into a hug he did not want to give.
The aforementioned scene description comes from the middle of the fifteenth season of the highly watched NCIS. Although CBS’s long running procedural can apply for a learner’s permit, the episode marked the introduction of one of the series’s future main characters: Kasie Hines as portrayed by Diona Reasonover.
She winces as she remembers the day of her audition.
“The audition date they gave me was two days after I had major knee surgery,” Diona reminisces. She hyperbolizes what she thinks the role may call for given the show’s subject matter. “They’re definitely going to want somebody who can jump over a car.”
Yet, even with her ailment, she continued to get callbacks.
“Every time I was going in, I was losing one accessory. By the test I was able to walk,” she reports. “I ran back through the lobby and said ‘Oh my God, I need so much aspirin I’m in so much pain!’”
NCIS is one of the most watched shows in the world. In a television landscape consistently veering towards streaming, CBS and its band of shows have yet to take a major hit. Viewership is consistent on a broadcast network that has seemingly cornered the market on double digit audience numbers. Where other networks are playing catch up to the streamers, CBS manages to walk the line between network powerhouse and streaming savant. The network’s streaming service, CBS All Access, launched in 2014 and has already exceeded well beyond expectations with its access to live TV, a n expansive back catalogue and highly anticipated originals like Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone reboot. Now, Diona is part of the CBS family. But she first had to become familiar with NCIS.
“I didn’t know that much about [the show]. I knew people loved it. I knew that it was [...], honestly, kind of an important cultural show.” “To have an audition for the show -- because I knew it was a big show -- I actually thought I wasn’t going to get it.”
It’s a warm fall day as I sit in my home office in Atlanta. My phone rings with an energetic buzz and, after brief niceties with Diona’s representation, I’m given over to the woman of the hour. She’s bright and quick, often welcomingly taking over the conversation at points.
“Mom’s love me,” she says with a confident, unseen smile.
“We just filmed a really great episode for Kasie…. Not only was it fun to do, but the writer… as we say in Detroit, he really put his foot in it. Do y'all say that? ‘Put your foot in it?’”
I’m from the south so we are not ignorant to that particular phrase.
“Will you do that for me? Will you find a way to casually work it into conversation?”
Diona even has a plan for Kasie for those still missing Pauley Perrette’s Abby.
“I think I’m going to push really hard this year for Kasie to go goth. I’m going to insist she only wear dog collars and platform boots,” she jests.
She hails from Detroit, Michigan, a city lucky enough to see its fair share of comedy based shows trickle through. Yet Diona has never performed in her hometown. The Second City location in the city dissolved in 2009 after 16 years of existence. Keegan-Michael Key, Maribeth Monroe, and Marc Evan Jackson are some of the greats to have originated there.
Fellow alumni Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson even created a critically acclaimed yet sadly unwatched Comedy Central show, Detroiters, based on the city -- utilizing it as a backdrop and allowing for untrained locals to play characters in it. But with Second City Detroit’s death came life as it also opened up the city to several other improv mainstays including a festival featuring various acts from all over North America.
“How ridiculous is it that I was a few miles away from Second City and I literally moved 3,000 miles across the country to do Second City,” she says poking fun at herself. “I met all these amazing Detroiters when I moved out here. I was like ‘Where are you from?’ and they're like ‘Detroit.’ And I’m like ‘Of course you are. Of course you grew up three blocks from me and I met you 3,000 miles away from the place.’”
Diona is versed in both improv and stage acting so the leap from comedy to drama is not much of one.
“Technically, the transition was actor-improvisor-actor. I went to college and grad school for acting. I transferred into improv because I was doing a lot of Shakespeare and saying a lot of the word ‘woe,’” she insists. “NCIS feels very full circle because it’s the first drama I’ve done that’s not a stage drama.”
Network TV wasn’t the first stop for this actor. For some time before its turn to single camera comedies, TBS was experimenting with multicamera originals. None were acclaimed. Episode orders shrank over the years before the network pivoted to short, creator driven fare. Towards the end came Clipped -- a show set in a barbershop co-starring Cheers staple George Wendt, Disney actress Ashley Tisdale and comedy podcaster/recent movie star Lauren Lapkus. Diona played one of the shop’s stylists. The show was canceled after ten episodes. But that didn’t stop her.
“That’s the easiest, when your first thing doesn’t work out. Because you didn’t have nothing to start with,” she laughs at her humble attitude. “You walk into a bank, you ain’t have no money. You checked your account, you still ain’t got no money. You walk out the same way you walk in.”
Diona took the cancellation in stride, using it as a learning experience.
“I was just grateful to have been there. When I got Clipped, I didn’t think I was ever going to get there. I was like ‘Well, if nothing else, I did something I didn’t think I was going to do.”
Diona’s charming, undefeatable aesthetic is admirable. She displays it so effortlessly. Even more so when she lets her, as she puts it, “nerd [show].”
“You’ve never found a random afternoon where you’re like ‘Let me just watch some Shakespeare. What’s Goneril up to right now?’” She reverts to a third person view on this part of the conversation pretty quickly. “I’m sure this is what your readers want to hear, right? They want to hear all my thoughts about how Shakespeare and Moliere influence our modern dramas.” We promptly jump back into how Empire and Succession are modern day retellings of King Lear.
Then there was the break we took so she could get a spider out of her house.
“Oh my God there’s a spider in my house!” “Hang on a second… Why are there so many spiders in here?! Don’t tell my wife because [...] she’s in charge of killing all the spiders.”
We even took a chance to comment on the Emmys, which aired the night before.
Not to mention she’s a writer too having worked on truTV’s Adam Ruins Everything and Hulu’s I Love You America in 2017 (note that her boss at the time, Sarah Silverman, was nominated and lost at this year’s Emmys). Just as some actors or comedians box themselves into a corner, Diona welcomes any and all descriptions. She applied (and reapplied) to the CBS Diversity Showcase as often as she could before ultimately landing a spot in the one time production. The experience isn’t known by many and it can be grueling to perform a three hour show but Diona welcomed the challenge.
Season 17 of NCIS premiered last week to familiar ratings. As always, the stakes were upped. The agents are shuffling from scene to scene with urgency trying to find out why fellow agent Gibbs was being hunted. But Kasie remains in her lab, trying to aid in the mystery as best she can. She, as always, cracks a joke in the midst of tension. And it, again as always, works.
Don’t misunderstand: it’s still intimidating to enter a show that’s been on as long as NCIS as a new cast member. Diona knows that. She grew up watching all of her co-stars on TV.
“100%. I was scared,” she admits. “Everybody was so nice the first day. I had cast, crew, everybody bringing me ice packs [for my knee].”
The cast and crew of NCIS opened their arms to their new family member.
“I think when you have a cast that’s been performing that long, people realize people are people and not superhuman. Shit happens…. They just want good work. Stuff outside of that, they’re not too worried about. I feel safe there.”
Follow Diona Reasonover on Instagram. Check out NCIS on CBS Tuesdays at 8 PM.