Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo were shooting a scene in a jail cell when we visited the Budapest set of their NCIS spinoff, NCIS: Tony & Ziva, last fall. In 10 action-packed episodes, the actors are reprising the roles of their beloved agents, Tony DiNozzo and former Mossad operative Ziva David. Their lives are radically different as the series begins, but during that moment in the pen, it’s classic “Tiva.” As she tends to his head wound, he playfully confesses that he might consider therapy. She looks at him with her usual exasperated affection and says, “All it took was a little thing like having our lives completely shattered.”
Behind bars is just one of the dangerous places they find themselves in NCIS: Tony & Ziva, a long-in-the-making series that features two twisty mysteries. One centers on the crime case that has the couple making a pit stop in prison (they won’t be there for long!). The other, and maybe more puzzling for longtime fans, is why Tony and Ziva, who have more chemistry than a million periodic tables, have split up.
As the pair race around Europe, flashbacks reveal what happened in their relationship, beginning with their joyful reunion after Tony learned Ziva was alive and left NCIS to be with her and raise their daughter, Tali. The in-the-past love scenes are a bit steamier on Paramount+ than they were on broadcast network CBS, and the heat builds again on this new mission. “It’s a romance in an action saga,” de Pablo notes.
The premiere finds them living in Paris, but not together, as they co-parent Tali with the help of a nanny, Sophie (Lara Rossi). Ziva owns a language school, and Tony has a security company, which is where the trouble begins.
“Tony started Salus Mondiale and became very successful,” Weatherly previews. “We protect people, but we also protect, for instance, Interpol’s finances. So that’s a high degree of threat, and that kicks us off.”
Despite some brave, world-saving moves in the dynamic premiere, Tony ends up being framed. Worse, the baddies threaten Tali. To save their daughter while they clear Tony’s name, they send Tali to safety with Sophie and start a journey across Europe with a team of their own, including his Chief Technical Officer Claudette (Amita Suman) and a hacker named Boris (Maximilian Osinski). De Pablo says. “We both go, ‘We need to do this, and we have to cooperate, and we have to make it work despite our differences, and maybe despite the fact that we are feeling the feels for each other.’ That is complicated. That’s where the show goes.”
There’s even one undercover op, first glimpsed in the premiere, featuring Ziva in a wedding dress and Tony in a tux. “The irony,” de Pablo says. “The thing that they most wanted [marriage] is now an undercover mission, and they’re dressed as the parts of the thing that they most wanted.”
So what did go wrong? “Tony’s resisting a lot of things he doesn’t know how to deal with,” de Pablo says. Ziva, meanwhile, is in therapy “and tackling these big issues,” de Pablo adds. “He’s watching and going, ‘What’s going on?’ He’s unraveling in his own way. Toward the end, you understand what that journey is from an emotional perspective.”
It’s no wonder 93 million fans viewed the trailer for Tony & Ziva the first week after it dropped in May. The energy between Weatherly and de Pablo has always been electric, and it showed during our cover shoot—on a balcony overlooking the Danube River. They’ve still got it, from the smoldering eye contact to the playful banter.
De Pablo enthusiastically offers that “shooting in Europe for us has been a dream.” It’s been a dream for fans (and us!) to see them together again, so we were thrilled to catch up with the pair, who were cuddled up on a sofa after the shoot.
How does it feel to be working together again?
Michael Weatherly: Sometimes, like when you go back to the 15-year class reunion. We’re in a scene, and she’s staring at my hairline. I’m like, “It’s going a little, but it’s fine.” There’s been hearing loss. I’ve shrunk. My earlobes have gotten bigger. My first scene, they said, “You’re going to walk in and sit down.” I said, “OK, so it’s a stunt.” I’m not getting any younger! I have a stuntman who jumps over cars, wears a tuxedo, shoots guns, gets shot.
Cote de Pablo: Michael!
Weatherly: You get to work with him because you’re doing your own stunts. He should be sitting here. You did a love scene with him.
De Pablo: [Laughs] No, that was fully you. My truth is I am so grateful, because who gets the chance to work with their very, very good friend on something that they really, truly care about, that they’ve been conjuring up for years and years? Michael and I spent a lot of time talking during the pandemic—we manifested this years ago.
All I heard was “love scene.”
De Pablo: A lot of that romance is happening in the past. The audience will get a glimpse of what happened in flashbacks. In the beginning, Ziva thinks [the relationship] is done. In flashbacks, we explore how they get together and where the communication broke down. These two stories are happening at the same time.
Weatherly: The B storyline is how Tony and Ziva dealt with the obstacles they had before them, the trust issues, and everything else. Are we going to co-parent? That’s the root of it.
Ziva faking her own death on NCIS must have created a few trust issues.
De Pablo: It comes from that, but also from her being honest with herself. Ziva has lived realities within realities. They’re also survival mechanisms. There were years where she had Tali, and then she was gone. We still don’t know exactly what happened. That will unfold. There’s this idea that the past comes back, and she deals with that in therapy. We know she was in a world of pain. They’re both infinitely wounded. They do love each other and are trying to figure it out. There’s a lot of heat, passionate arguments, passionate scenes.
Weatherly: Yes, the opposite of love is not hate.
De Pablo: It’s indifference. He’s always telling me this.
Is it steamier on a streamer than on CBS?
De Pablo: So, this is Paramount+. It’s a different exploration of romance. There’s a glimpse of bodies. There is a making love scene. There is an exploration of physicality, which hasn’t really happened before.
Weatherly: It’s a little R [rated] here.
Which was your most memorable romantic scene to shoot in this new series?
De Pablo: It’s a flashback, this romantic date, candlelight.
Weatherly: My father had passed away the day before, so it was Friday morning. Thursday night I stayed up all night, and—
I’m so sorry.
Weatherly: It’s life, right? It’s 8 o’clock in the morning. I’ve slept two hours. I might’ve had a very big bottle of wine the night before. Cote came over and gave me a big hug when she found out the night before. I felt very taken care of.
De Pablo: He wasn’t with family. He was abroad. And all of a sudden, he just gets a phone call. So, what do you do? You don’t have your wife, your kids, no sister, nothing.
Weatherly: Yeah, you’re alone. That can be a little heady to sit with that kind of a loss without being around people. So the next day we’re doing the scene and I think this is my opportunity to show Ziva that I’m not going to be on eggshells around her, and that I’m going to show her that I run my own company, I’ve been the father to Tali for four years, and grown into a man. He’s saying, “I got you. You are safe.” Very different than DiNozzo in the squad room getting slapped on the back of the head and running around seeking everyone’s approval.
De Pablo: It’s a seduction scene. He’s still charming and funny.
What are the chances they’ll get passionate in the present-day timeline, too?
De Pablo: There’s an attraction that she’s trying to keep at bay. It’s complex for her, and she’s denying it the entire time. “I can’t allow him to see what I feel because I don’t know what he feels.” He starts looking at her differently, she starts looking at Tony differently. She starts being physically affected by what’s happening to her.
Weatherly: In one scene, we share the bed…
De Pablo: In those little moments, you sort of betray yourself, and all of a sudden, your truth is very exposed. You feel very seen and naked, and if you’re not ready to show that, it can become a very vulnerable moment. What if the other person doesn’t feel that way?
You’ve both lived a lot of life since you last played Tony and Ziva. How does that affect your approach to the characters?
De Pablo: They’re trying to be adults but having a tough time dealing with communication. Michael and I are older, and we’ve done our fair share of trying to communicate to each other and in life. We have that information, and we bring it to the show. I had become a mother in real life. And then we were playing that I was a mother, which we had never played before on the mothership.
Weatherly: We got together in the very first scene, which was in the Italian safe house. We were coming in and casing the room. Two things happened at the same time. One was
I knew exactly what she was going to do and what I was going to do. But there was a new feature inside Cote’s demeanor; there was this new angle of light. I didn’t realize [why] until later. I was like, oh, she’s a mother. I’m meeting the mother. The mother was always there, but now the mother is the mother. I was able to see that aspect of Cote that I had blinders to. We’re parents in real life, but we’re now playing them. This is a show about trust at its core. We have had to trust many aspects of this [series]. The characters are exploring this theme.
What are Tony and Ziva like as parents?
De Pablo: [The fight] never leaves Ziva. It’s been ingrained in her. Unconsciously, she’s doing the same thing to her kid, and it’s what she doesn’t want to do. She never wants her kid to follow in her footsteps, but her paranoia seeps in. As a mother, you don’t ever want to mess it up. No one gives you a brochure. You
try your best, but your insecurities pop up. Your ghosts, fears, and traumas catch up.
Weatherly: At a screening, the whole theater laughed because I go, “That was me being funny dad. Now I’m being serious dad.” Tali says, “It’s nice to meet you.”
How was it for Isla to step in as the daughter of these two powerhouse parents?
Weatherly: Isla is the most incredible.
De Pablo: She’s like the still Yoda. She’s a remarkable younger human because there’s this ageless quality about her. She’s wise beyond her years. And it so happens she’s our child. I was like, really? This came from us? She’s a remarkable creature.
This is a very different world from the one in NCIS. How else is it unlike that show?
Weatherly: We’re not taking DNA evidence down to the mass spectrometer so that it can be analyzed and then brought to autopsy, where someone can give a long oration.
De Pablo: It doesn’t live in the formula it lived in before. We were interested in the characters not forever living within the confines of an agency. We wanted to explore the relationship.
Do you have to watch NCIS to understand the show?
De Pablo: When this came around, it was an ode to the fandom. For them, there was nothing to explain. It was characters they’ve loved for a long time. They’re always asking, “Did they ever get back together?”
Weatherly: Is there an ostrich somewhere pulling their head out of the sand, going, “What is Star Trek and NCIS?”
Are there Easter eggs for fans?
Weatherly: In that safe house in Italy, there are Easter eggs but also beautiful cinematic storytelling. In that first episode, I don’t know if it counts, but I say, “On it, boss,” to her.
De Pablo: We make references to the mothership.
Weatherly: We know who the new Gibbs is.
De Pablo: Oh, come on!
Who is the boss, really?
De Pablo: This is funny because Michael and I have talked about this. At one point, people were like, “Oh, well, but who is [in charge]?” I said, “Look, there is no Ziva without Tony, and there is no Tony without Ziva.” He’s my number one, and I should be hopefully his number one. They have to learn to prioritize each other. That’s kind of the show.
Weatherly: It is a point well made. When communication isn’t going well, if there is a lack of trust, that becomes a question of dominance. It becomes about power. It becomes, “You weren’t there, and I was parenting.” It becomes about resentment. That’s really cool grown-up stuff, but it’s also super cool. Wicked awesome. Wham, bam. Flash bang!
Sounds explosive enough for a Season 2. Will there be one?
Weatherly: If there are future seasons, there are a million stories to tell. The added complexity of this extraordinary Tali—it would be interesting to see what a 16-year-old little Ziva monster is. Can we shoot in Japan? Let’s go.
De Pablo: I’d rather live in what’s happening. We are doing everything with respect and love and pouring our hearts into it. This has been a dream of ours for a long time.
NCIS: Tony & Ziva, Series Premiere, Thursday, September 4 (three episodes), Paramount+
