Michael Weatherly & Cote de Pablo Talk Changing ‘NCIS’ Format With ‘Tony & Ziva’, What Spinoff Should Really Be Called & Who Else Could Join
15.06.2024 - 18:49
/ deadline.com
With cameras soon to roll on their buzzy NCIS spin-off, Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo have gotten into the weeds on NCIS: Tony & Ziva. The pair were part of a large NCIS contingent here at the Monte Carlo TV Festival to celebrate the juggernaut franchise hitting the 1,000-episode mark. It included the mothership series’ Brian Dietzen and Wilmer Valderrama who also talked about the expansion of what posters up for the Festival are referring to as the ‘NCISverse’.
What is known so far about the NCIS: Tony & Ziva spin-off is that it will follow Tony (Weatherly) and Ziva (de Pablo) and their daughter Tali, in Europe, and that they are forced to go on the run while trying to work out who is after them.
Weatherly and de Pablo were careful not to give away plot points, but did talk about how and why the series came about. “We wanted to take these two characters away from the Agency and put them in a world, and the world that was attractive to us was international,” de Pablo said.
She added that wherever her and Weatherly went they were being bombarded with the same fan questions: “It was always like, ‘whatever happened to Tony and Ziva, do you think they’ll ever get back together, where are they?’ And all of a sudden, we had the opportunity to put it together into a show.
“We’re trying to address all of these questions, and the idea of trust, and how they move forward… they’re trying to make things work while also parenting and having a lot of challenges thrown at them.”
Weatherly said the show should really be called Tony, Ziva & Tali because the couple’s daughter will play such an important role, shaping the story and introducing “a new element of trouble.”
“Every choice that Tony and Ziva have to make in their