1 of 3 | Left to right, Isla Gie as Tali, Cote De Pablo as Ziva David and Michael Weatherly as Tony Dinozzo In “NCIS: Tony & Ziva.” Season 1 wraps up Thursday. Photo by Marcell Piti/Paramount+
NEW YORK, Oct. 23 (UPI) — Cote de Pablo says reuniting with Michael Weatherly for NCIS: Tony & Ziva was a leap of faith that, in some ways, mirrored what the estranged lovers they play were going through.
Wrapping up its first season on Paramount+ Thursday, the series reunites the titular former Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agents after 12 years for a new globe-trotting adventure. Along for the ride is their daughter Tali, played by Isla Gie.
“We went into it knowing it was going to be special because Michael and I really wanted to work together. What it was going to turn into or if everything that we hoped was going to be sort of done, we kind of had to trust,” de Pablo, 45, recently told UPI during a round-table interview with reporters at New York Comic Con.
“It’s a game of trust,” she said. “Funny enough, ironically, the entire Season 1 became a journey into a relationship that explored trust and honesty, so very much what we were living in our life — and trying to trust and see where this was going to go — was also happening within the relationship of Tony and Ziva.”
De Pablo said she had no trouble getting back into the role so many years after leaving the NCIS mothership series.
“It was awesome. There’s not a lot of actresses in the world that get to go back and revisit a character that is 1. beloved, 2. kick-ass, 3. very strong and has come through a lot in life,” the actress noted.
“So, the idea that she kind of keeps encountering these really challenging circumstances and then keeps getting up and fighting is inspiring to me, but I also feel like there’s a lot of women that come up to me and they respond to the character and they respond to that very thing that I respond to. So, I just try to honor her in the best way I can.”
Recapturing the magic between Tony and Ziva also came naturally to de Pablo and Weatherly.
“There’s something that happens when he and I are on camera, and sometimes off camera, too. We just die laughing. We just have this thing,” de Pablo said.
“I don’t like to really mess with it. I don’t like to question it. I just kind of respect it for what it is,” she added. “I know plenty of actors that have really good chemistry with one person and they want to work with that one person.”
She pointed to classic screen icons such as Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton as examples of “wonderful partnerships” she admires.
“I’m not going to say Michael and I have THAT, but we have a modern version of whatever that may be, which is something that we respect and we love and we treasure,” de Pablo said.
The spinoff shows how Ziva has been working through some mental health issues with a therapist, an aspect of the character de Pablo enjoyed digging into and credited showrunner John McNamara with bringing out in the story.
“They felt that it was very important for us to understand where she was at, the sacrifices that she had made, giving her daughter away, and all of that, and how that affected her, and also how that immediately affected her ability to be able to connect to the love of her life,” de Pablo said.
“So, you need to go into it in order to have a payoff,” she added. “You need to go into it in order to understand that she has been doing a lot of work to get to a place where she can be honest with herself and, also, recognize maybe Tony’s not being so honest or maybe there’s something missing here. What are we missing? Can we move on? Can we be together?”
De Pablo described McNamara as a “funny, brilliant” collaborator who always elevates the material on which he is working.
“Never in a million years did we think that the show would look the way it looks, that we would explore heavily all of the emotional stuff that we got a chance to explore, that he would want to explore who Tali is,” she said.
“It’s the weirdest and most beautiful thing in the world, because she is so much Tony and Ziva. She really is perfect casting, not only physically, but emotionally.”
If the show is picked up for a second season, de Pablo thinks Tony and Ziva will likely have to train Tali to protect herself given how many dangerous situations her parents find themselves in.
“Ziva comes from a place of extreme paranoia. I think that paranoia will feed into the teaching,” she said. “But I think it’s going to come from a proactive place, not a place of fear. So, I think it’s going to be a very proactive and empowering thing where she just wants her daughter to be as prepared as she can be for any kind of thing that may come her way.”