Tony in a tux, Ziva in a wedding dress … what exactly is going on in the NCIS: Tony & Ziva series premiere?! Well, Michael Weatherly, Cote de Pablo, and showrunner John McNamara stopped by TV Insider and TV Guide Magazine’s studio at San Diego Comic-Con, and you know we had to get the scoop, especially after the trailer released during their panel!
The series came about, McNamara says, “because Michael would not stop bugging me. We both have a deep love of espionage, movies, books, TV, and we’ve been friends for actually 31 years, and there’s always been talk between seasons or when we’re both free of like, ‘Let’s do a thing in Europe, would that be cool? A Hitchcock thing.’”
Then, Weatherly came to him with the idea of a Tony and Ziva spinoff set in Europe. Getting de Pablo on board was, for the showrunner, “the biggest hurdle because I didn’t know her and she had no reason to trust me except Michael’s like, ‘Yeah, trust him.’”
While he had “a vague idea of wanting to do something along the lines of North by Northwest,” it was de Pablo who said, “I think I know what the first scene is. … Michael’s in a tux, I’m in a wedding gown. We’re in a beautiful church in Europe. He says, ‘You look gorgeous,’ and I say, ‘Let’s just get this over with.’ I walk away.”
According to de Pablo, “All I knew was that I had this sort of visual thing. I’m not sure if it was a dream or maybe I was daydreaming… but it was a church. And I remember collecting all of these pictures of beautiful locations, and I remember thinking it was on a cliff overlooking the water, and it was just this glorious kind of a thing. And there’s a wedding dress, Michael comes in a tux, we’re sort of running from bad guys, but the audience is going to find us sort of mid-mystery. Two people meet, they’re dressed. Are they getting married? Are they not? What’s going on? Are they together? Are they not? It’s very evident that somehow something’s off.” It was then up to the writers’ room to figure out what was going on.
For Tony in that scene, “I think she is stunning. He has all these feelings for her, but can he trust those senses?” asks Weatherly. “Can he trust that moment? And then it turns out, can the audience trust that moment? And as we travel down the rabbit holes of our show, for the audience, it’s about trust. So we’re sharing in that.”
Watch the full video interview above for much more from Michael Weatherly, Cote de Pablo, and John McNamara, including a look at a special pair of Tony & Ziva sneakers Weatherly was wearing, reuniting, and how they make it through scenes with exposition — with a Helen Mirren shout-out!
NCIS: Tony & Ziva, Series Premiere, Thursday, September 4 (three episodes), Paramount+
—Reporting by Kate Hahn