[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS: Tony & Ziva Season 1 Episode 4 “Wedding Crashers.”]
Might Tony (Michael Weatherly) and Ziva (Cote de Pablo) be on their way to a happily ever after on their NCIS spinoff? Well, it certainly looks that way after the latest episode.
In the fourth episode of NCIS: Tony & Ziva, the exes get engaged in the flashbacks (to June 2020), juxtaposed with the fake wedding they, Claudette (Amita Suman), Boris (Maximilian Osinski), and Fruzsi (Anne-Marie Waldeck) stage to trap Martine (Nassima Benchicou). But while Tony and Ziva didn’t work out in the past, their present looks promising, with them giving in to the sparks that are still there and kissing on the boat as they get away.
Below, Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo break down those major flashback and present-day moments for Tony and Ziva.
In the flashbacks, we get the proposal. Both of you, talk about filming that scene, and Michael, what makes Tony propose in that moment?
Michael Weatherly: Cote de Pablo.
Cote de Pablo: That’s on you. [Laughs]
Weatherly: Well, I’ll start and then hand off to you because I don’t want to talk too much about it because I think what’s really interesting is what the fans think.
De Pablo: I think you’re absolutely right.
Weatherly: What a viewer feels. And it’s almost the reverse of how I feel about acting, which is you can tell me the words and you can tell me where to stand and what to wear and how my hair should look, but you can’t tell me how to feel or what to think, right? Because that’s mine, and I think each viewer — it’s like when you read a book, each reader creates their own, through their beautiful, kaleidoscopic imagination, the world of the book. So you’re going to have a thousand people read Huckleberry Finn, it’s a thousand Huckleberry Finns. I want that moment to be a little bit of a mystery, but I will pack that mystery with there is a lot that went into our shooting that scene, and it is loaded in all kinds of ways. Cote de Pablo, you’re next.
De Pablo: I think I have nothing more to add. [Weatherly laughs]
But talk about filming that scene because it’s a major moment for these characters.
De Pablo: It is a major moment, but I think it has a payoff in Episode 10. I think you understand a lot about that scene in Episode 10, and also, what Michael said is very clever. I think it’s right. I think it should be left to the interpretation of the audience. I think we had our opinions, and I think we had our feelings, and then ironically, the payoff really is in Episode 10.
Interesting. So, Sophie (Lara Rossi) tells Ziva that she and Tony have both changed, and Ziva seems skeptical about that, but how much would you say that your characters have changed, and how much have they realized how much they’ve changed? Because those two things are very different.
De Pablo: You’re right, and that’s a really good distinction. I do think that the characters have changed. I don’t know if they’re aware of the changes that they’ve gone through. I think the entire arc of Season 1 will explore precisely that. How much have they changed? And within those changes, can they still make whatever they had work? I think you’re talking about, in many ways, a little bit about twin souls, twin flames. It’s like people that sort of try to make it work. They both come from very similar wounds, and they have defense mechanisms that are quite alike in many ways that don’t allow them to sort of get closer. And when they do, something happens. But you are right in the sense that 20 years have gone by since the audience met these two people, right? That’s 2005. So a lot happens.
And first of all, who can say, my God, I’ve had the luxury of revisiting a character 20 years later. I mean, that is an astounding gift for I think any actor who’s played a beloved character for long periods of time. So to be able to go and sort of mark their emotional arc — they started off, I was certainly in my 20s, and now I’m in my 40s. And so there is a lot of life that happens in pretty much two decades. You do have a lot of the same things that make you laugh, and you do have a lot of the things that make you tick and all of that. You can’t change the character fundamentally because I don’t think the person changes that much. But I think circumstances in life do modify behaviors, and they certainly make you aware of them to the point where you need to confront things in order to move forward.
And I do think the exploration of that happens in Season 1. So that’s the part that Michael and I really wanted to play with. We loved the structure of the procedural back then, but it didn’t allow us the time, the luxury of time to really explore the relationship aspect of it. We wanted to throw these two characters in a world where they were certainly challenged by circumstances, but where they could absolutely dive into that sort of emotional, psychological thing, which is where Michael and I really wanted to put our efforts. And that’s the thing that I think most fans were asking: What was going on with them? Where were they? How were they making it work? Are they together? How are they parenting? How’s that little girl? How is she turning out? Season 1 is an ode to the fans. It’s hopefully an answer to many a question that Michael and I have gotten throughout many years of travel and an homage to the fans. It’s a love letter to our fans.
This episode leaves Tony and Ziva in perhaps the most hopeful place that we’ve seen them in the present day. How do each of them feel about a potential future together at that point?
De Pablo: I think for them it’s always going to be scary. I think because they both come from things that I think they constantly run away from. But I think ultimately, and the thing that I always told Michael is if we go back and we really do explore this, these characters, I’d love to be able to give them some sort of a happy ending. And it doesn’t mean that it’s immediate. It means that it has to be somehow earned. And I think the earning, the happy ending is what will make this show the thing that it is. They have to go on journeys. They have to overcome obstacles. They have to fight the dragons. They have to fight their demons. They have to make peace with themselves, and they have to make it work.
Weatherly: What I would add to that is they have been learning to co-parent. And today, I was thinking about something my father said to me 30 years ago when I was going to become a parent for the first time. And he was very concerned about the circumstances surrounding that. And he was very quiet. And we were in France traveling together, ironically, and I said, “What’s going on?” He wasn’t somebody usually to hold back. And he said, “The hardest part of being a parent is you know exactly how hard something is going to be for your child and the pain they’re going to experience, and you have to let them go do it.”
And I think that’s in the show. It’s really crazy how, as you go forward with the show, they’re learning that their love for each other is like their child, it is personified by their child, but you’re never really going to have a happily ever after. You can only have the moment where everything is good and believe that that moment is an infinity, but you can’t plan for some day down the line where it’s happily ever after. So I think that at the end of Episode 4, without giving away too much, there is a happily ever after moment, which I think is enough almost. I know that’s very romantic of me, but I’m a bit of a romantic.
The show has set up a prison break for Jonah, and John told me that the tone of the show shifts with that. What else can you both preview, and what can you say about the skills that both Tony and Ziva need to use to try to accomplish their goal? We’ve already seen them both use each other’s in the premiere when it came to the hospital, but are they now really using their own?
De Pablo: What I would say about that is that one through 10 were shot in blocks. So Episodes 1 and 2, block 1, [Episodes] 3 and 4, block 2, and every single block was directed by a different director. So every block is sort of like its own little world. If you watch them all together, then you understand that it’s a cohesive world, that it all sort of makes sense, but they’re their own little adventures. Episodes 5 and 6, that is an action-packed, dark block because a lot of really intense things happen there, and that’s one of my favorite blocks. And it’s a really fantastic — they are two really, really great episodes.
You actually get to see also the daughter sort of at the forefront of who she is as a person. And the audience will get to love Tali, played beautifully by Isla [Gie] and of course Olivia [Brody]. But Isla is the one that’s sort of at the house and doing most of the action stuff, which is where you really [see] — and I refer to the sort of older Tali I think more than the younger Tali because the one that we get to develop, I think a little bit more is the older one. We get to see traits of her that are very much like her parents. So you really get to see that the legacy of Tony and Ziva, if there is such a thing, live through this child. And you could absolutely see it.
Isla is a gymnast. So she lives in her body in a way that, for example, Ziva lived in her body. And so she can do things physically, which we did not want her to do, but she’s so game for actually going into that world. She wants to do her own stunts, she’s really excited about fight sequences, and she’s always asking these really terrific questions about, how do you do that and how do you connect with that? So, there is an actor there that is a very curious actor, so it’s a very interesting thing to watch. And then you get to see all of that that she does in that episode and then you get to see all of the stuff in the prison that’s Tony and Ziva. I don’t know if I could say more because I don’t want to give it away, but it’s one of my favorite blocks. And I think when people see it, they’ll understand why. It’s action packed, and it’s riveting as far as the stuff that happens. There’s violence, and there’s a moment there that’s very intense.
Michael, how many pop culture references are we going to get from Tony with that prison break?
Weatherly: He is reliably steady. He’s reliably referential. John McNamara and I have known each other for a long time, and so those were pretty easy for us to go with. If we get to continue making this show, I think we can count on at least 100 more.
NCIS: Tony & Ziva, Thursdays, Paramount+