The newest spin-off of the globally successful series in the NCIS franchise, NCIS: Tony & Ziva, premieres today on Paramount+. When we last left the duo, Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) was seemingly killed, and Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) discovered they had a daughter, Tali (Isla Gie). It was later revealed that Ziva faked her death to protect Tony and Tali, and the three were reunited. The story picks up in the new series, and Tony and Ziva have been raising their daughter together. But when Tony’s security company comes under attack, they find themselves on the run from both the criminals and Interpol through Europe in search of answers. As they fight to survive and expose who is is behind the cyber attacks, they must learn to trust each other again, perhaps even paving the way for their own unconventional happily ever after.

Recently, stars Weatherly and de Pablo spoke with SciFi Vision about the new series, what it was like stepping back into their characters, whether or not they expected to come back, Tony and Ziva's relationship, what they are excited for fans to see, and more.

Listen to the interview and read the transcript below. The first three episodes of NCIS: Tony & Ziva are now available on Paramount+, with new episodes premiering weekly on Thursdays.




SCIFI VISION:   Hi, both of you. It's great to talk to you. I had been watching the series back when you were first on the original, way back twenty plus years ago. God, that's a long time ago.

COTE DE PABLO:   It was a long time ago. [laughs]

SCIFI VISION:   So, for both of you, how either easy or difficult was it kind of stepping back into them after so long? Whichever one of you wants to go first.

MICHAEL WEATHERLY:   Cote, can I start with this one?

COTE DE PABLO:   Yeah, of course.]

MICHAEL WEATHERLY:   So, I was thinking about this today. I was thinking about getting ready to talk about the show. You know, it's funny. Cote and I, you know, obviously we approach the work sort of differently from different - She's extraordinarily well trained, and has a huge talent just innately and everything, and I did a Snickers commercial. You know, that's basically the - But now I understand acting much more than I did thirty years ago, thirty-five years ago, when I started when I was doing soaps, and one of the things I discovered was, you have to find that part of yourself that is going to be that character.

So, when I did Dark Angel, and I had to play Logan Cale, who was a really serious guy in a wheelchair, who was very earnest, and I found that part of myself that was like a warrior for justice and truth that lives inside me that will fight to the death to do what's right. So, when I was doing Logan Cale on Dark Angel, it felt very much like I was playing myself. Then, when I started doing DiNozzo, I had worked with Jensen Ackles on Dark Angel, and he played this guy who was a smart aleck, and I thought, “Oh, I was a class clown.” I'm like, “Wouldn't it be fun to do a federal agent who's a class clown?” And that was kind of my way in. I found that aspect of my personality, and I just dilated that out and grew it out and sort of, “Let's see what happens if I'm an overblown version of that.”

So, getting to your question, to go back and play DiNozzo, to get back into that like David Byrne and Stop Making Sense, the big giant suit, like the funny, to me, it was weird at first to step into the character, because I was like, “oh,” because I never know what I'm going to do until I get on set, and Cote knows this.

So, it wasn't until I was on set, and I looked at Cote, and I thought, “We have a kid. We’re together.” And as we were rehearsing, it came together so quickly, because it’s just the forces of nature at work, like the systems behind you, you know, the laws of attraction are extreme. It's so dense, what Cote and I play inside the show. Everything has such magnitude that I think by the end of the first take, I was laughing on the inside at how fucking easy it was to work with Cote de Pablo, because she shows me who I am, and then the character is right there.

So, that's a really long answer, which is why I wanted to go first. But it's a really long answer to say, “It wasn't hard at all,” because all I have to do is look at Cote, and I know true north, and I know where the center of the solar system is. I know what's happening.

And it's really fun, really beautiful, and really rare to get to have those moments as an actor where you can really trust yourself and feel free and go out and be very vulnerable and emotional, all that other stuff that comes up in the series. Sorry, Cote, I'll stop talking now.

COTE DE PABLO:   No, I loved it, and I couldn't agree more.

I think really it comes down to, you know, to trust, and it comes down to - look, at the end of the day, we had no idea how it was going to be, and quite frankly, we didn't want to talk about how it was going to be, because that is precisely the surprise element that we were willing to explore. I think we both showed up. We were both really excited [and] I think very nervous, because we didn't know. And I think the first scene, there was a moment there that we had sort of like get very close and [were] looking to each other's eyes, and in that moment, we just found it. It was just in that moment. Before that, in the scene, we sort of did this cat and mouse thing where we had to sort of search the perimeter and make sure that the house was safe. But then we ended the scene sort of looking at each other, and it was in that moment that we found everything that we had been in the past, and I think we were both really happy with that moment.

And I think everyone kind of went, “Oh, there it is.” [laughs] So, it was great. Never did I doubt it was going to be there, because Michael and I had many conversations. We were living in completely different coasts. I was in California; Michael was in the East Coast, but we would have these very long pandemic conversations in which we discussed a lot of things. Of course, we talked about Tony and Ziva, and we talked about the past, but we also talked about life. You know, we talked about a lot of life, and we were both going through pretty intense transitions in life.

So, at one moment, I remember Michael saying like, “Hey, you know, when we get to do this, if we get to do this, what if…?” And there was no - it's sort of like that stopped rather quickly, the question of what if, because if we could talk for that long, and we could have so much fun in the exploration of things and all the hypothetical and “Oh, let's go into this and let's go into that.” I had no doubt in my mind, and I think Michael felt the same way that we would find something. I mean, boy, if you left us alone, we could talk for a long time. So, yes, it was about trust, and when we got there, we had that. But then we discovered very quickly that the fun element was still there. So, then it was just like, “All right, let's go.”

SCIFI VISION:   Back then, when you quit, did you think you would come back? I was just curious if you expected this, or was it kind of a big surprise when you found out?

COTE DE PABLO:   Well, when I walked away from the show, there was something that was deeply unresolved, which is, first of all, I had no idea that I was going to walk away from the show. So, it wasn't planned, and when that happened, we had a scene, which was the tarmac scene where the characters say goodbye. That was shot in second unit. So, it wasn't with our regular crew, which is rare. It was a very big day, because what Michael and I didn't know was that it was going to be the last time we worked up until we worked again in Budapest together, and it was a very heartfelt day. I went home, and I was just so saddened by that day. And then subsequently, I think for many months after that, I was in a deep, deep sadness.

There was a family element that I missed. Of course, I missed the cast, and I missed all of that, but I really missed working with Michael. Like, I really, I really missed working with Michael. And, you know, then life happens and blah, blah, blah, but we've addressed that.

So, in many ways, we were brought back together by the forces of whatever you want to call it and obviously the intention of wanting to do it again. I think for Michael, too, there was this unresolved thing, and certainly the storylines and the mothership [show] supported it. You know, there was this child now where Ziva goes back, but you never actually get to see Tony and Ziva on screen again in the mothership.

So, we knew we had a real opportunity, and Michael and I talked about it, meaning we didn't want to ever be in the mothership together, because we knew that if we gave that away, then we wouldn't have the surprise element that we have so patiently waited for the Tony & Ziva show. So, I'm not sure if that answers anything.

MICHAEL WEATHERLY:   What's funny, Cote, is that the way that they constructed Tali being conceived without DiNozzo knowing that that had taken place. I mean, he was there during the, you know, conception.

COTE DE PABLO:   No, you were not there at all.

MICHAEL WEATHERLY:   I was passed out. No. [laughs] But because the writers had to sort of bend themselves into a pretzel to be like, “How do we write DiNozzo off the show? Well, we're going to have it that offscreen Ziva, unbeknownst to Tony, had a baby, and she raised it. But now she's dead, because she was blown up in an explosion, but she knew she was in danger. So, she gave the baby to Mossad, and then Mossad brought the ninja killer baby to D.C.” I mean, it was - But the beautiful thing about the pretzel logic of how - It was the basis, and we ran with it, because it was like, “Oh, that's really wrong that she wouldn't tell Tony that he was a father, that she would fake her death and hide and not tell Tony or her daughter.” But all those things that you also understand that they were beautiful, because they gave us the launchpad.

COTE DE PABLO:   Yeah, and then, I think, through season one, you understand why certain choices had to be made, you know, to the detriment of her psychological well-being, because I don't think she was okay with making these choices. I don't think she had a choice. So much of it is circumstantial, you know, because of the lives they've lived and because of the trauma that has happened. So, there are a lot of choices that are made that are brutal, but they're sort of for the bigger picture, you know, to save the kid, to make sure that Tali has a chance to live a life in safety with her dad. I mean, you know, none of these things are easy choices, and they certainly come with [their] own share of pain.

MICHAEL WEATHERLY:   We used to call Mark Harmon Papa Smurf, because he was like the daddy of NCIS. And in interesting way, I think if DiNozzo had stayed on NCIS, it never would have been a comfortable shift for him becoming - You know, once Mark was leaving the show, for Gibbs to leave the show, I don't think it's natural for Tony to take that place. He was never that father figure. But what Ziva gave him was the opportunity to become a real father, not a Papa Smurf to a bunch of investigators. And it's again, it's such an accident of how these things get created that we get to watch Tony and Ziva figure each other out in a much deeper way than the mothership would have given you the opportunity to go into.

And I think that's the reason it's on streaming platform is that the world is bigger. The world is deeper, [and] we're allowed to tell this serialized story, and Cote's outfits are more expensive.

COTE DE PABLO:   [laughs] No they’re not.

MICHAEL WEATHERLY:   [laughs] No they’re not.

SCIFI VISION:   What part are you most excited for fans to get to see both of you?

COTE DE PABLO:   Oh, God. There's a lot. Okay, so I think the fans have always wanted to see little romance between Tony and Ziva. So, we're giving them that pretty early on. So, that's going to be great. There's going to be a lot of action. So, the stuff that they love about the characters, that's not going away. So, they're going to still find themselves within this world that's that keeps throwing them curveballs, and they have to somehow fight their way out of it. I think the fans are going to get to love this ensemble cast. It's solid.

It's funny. They have really good moments, and I think they're going to love the love story, you know, the sort of against all odds kind of a thing. And by that, I mean, like, they just keep fighting. They just keep fighting, you know, and they keep showing up for each other. And these are the kind of values that throughout season one, they start projecting onto this child, and this child picks it all up, you know, and it's it's kind of beautiful.

MICHAEL WEATHERLY:   Yeah, it's like it's the new power triangle in sort of story terms, because it's not a binary of just Tony and Ziva, even though that is the title. It's really Tony, Ziva and Tali, because they are now inextricably in this relational sort of equation, you know, like the math of it is so pure that no matter how nice they try to be to each other. You just have to scratch a little bit, and you find like a mama bear who will not be messed with and a papa who is like, “This is my daughter!” You know, and and it's like, “Oh, it's not our daughter?”

COTE DE PABLO:   Yeah, but also, to add to that, Michael, there's a lot of stuff that we go into, which is the unspoken that happens in partnerships, the resentment that you carry, that you're afraid of, that you don't allow yourself to to say and how things erode, you know, and how they they fall apart from the inside if you don't acknowledge in honesty and in love. So, there're a lot of really big themes that are being explored, and there's a depth to it that I really appreciate. I think the fans will, too.

MICHAEL WEATHERLY:   It's a little bit more of a grown-up thing too, and John McNamara really and his team really brought that to the writing. They really gave us this deep look behind the scenes of of like how it's not just a three-minute scene in an episode of NCIS where we're like, “Oh, I want more of that.” This will actually go deeper and deeper. And John, as Cote and John and I would sit and talk, some of our talks would just be about the nature of truth and trust and hope and what do these mean in a relationship? And what happens when hope dies? You know, it's like, “Oh, well, we would do an hour on that.”

You know, we had dinner the other night, and it's like, we don't sit and talk about show business. We talk about relationships and, you know, John had some great book suggestions, and it's deeper, and I think so resonant for the fans, but also, if you've never watched NCIS before, and you just are clicking around and you see Tony & Ziva, and you watch that trailer, you're like, “What the fuck are these people doing? That's a crazy story.”