‘NCIS: ‘Tony & Ziva’ Star Coté De Pablo On The Importance Of Healing Trauma & How Becoming A Mom IRL Influenced Her Performance

Returning to the world of NCIS has been a gift to Coté de Pablo, who reprised the role of Ziva David in NCIS: Tony & Ziva, alongside Michael Weatherly as Tony DiNozzo. The entire first season is available now via Paramount+ and is currently pending news of a second season renewal.

De Pablo is coming off a major high from reuniting with her longtime friend Weatherly to expand on their characters’ stories and to introduce their daughter, Tali (Isla Gie), as a pre-teen to fans who can’t get enough of the DiNozzo family. The duo has a fresh start on a new show, heralding in a new era while still honoring the past. There’s also a lot of action-packed adventures, drama at every corner, and a whole lot of girl power.

The fans have shown up in a big way for Tony & Ziva, according to Deadline’s ratings expert Katie Campione. She explains why a second season renewal is looking good for the latest NCIS installment.

“It was clear well before Tony & Ziva premiered that there was a huge appetite for this NCIS spinoff, given that the trailer broke the franchise’s record for most views in a week with a whopping 93M. When it finally hit Paramount+, the series soared to No. 7 among all streaming series for the week, with 6.8M hours viewed across four episodes, per Luminate. Since then, Tony & Ziva has steadily remained among the Top 30 streaming series in Luminate’s weekly rankings, illustrating quite a strong season-long performance for the series,” she said.

In addition to de Pablo, Weatherly and Gie, the series also stars Amita Suman, Maximilian Osinski, Lara Rossi, Isla Gie, Nassima Benchicou, Terence Maynard, Julian Ovenden and James D’Arcy.

To read more about the Season 1 finale of NCIS: Tony & Ziva, featuring a Q&A with showrunner John McNamara, click here.

Deadline caught up with de Pablo this week to discuss all things NCIS, including how becoming a mom helped inform Ziva’s character this season and how it changed de Pablo as an actor. Part 1 of our interview can be found below, with the second part coming later today.

DEADLINE: At the start of the season, Ziva’s therapist encourages her to “choose happiness.” Why was it important to you that, after all these years, Ziva do just that?

COTÉ DE PABLO: It’s really great to talk about the idea of a person loving themselves, which comes through choosing happiness, choosing therapy, allowing for healing to happen, giving yourself a little bit of time, and resetting to gather yourself so you “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” That’s a famous quote from a poem [“Wild Geese”] that I love, written by Mary Oliver. It’s been quite a journey to be able to do that with Ziva.

DEADLINE: While it was exciting for fans of Tony and Ziva to see them reunite and perhaps continue their love story that has been nothing short of complicated, why was it important to you that Ziva focus on healing her traumas?

DE PABLO: I don’t think there is any love, the kind that lasts anyway, without really tackling the crap, the past, and the trauma, all of that. I didn’t really know that that was such a huge lesson for Coté.

It’s like, you watch the arc of the character and you go, “Well, what can I learn from this?” and there are many things you can learn from a character’s journey. You’ve been honoring the character for months, and then you finish. Usually, what happens when you’ve been working so diligently and so passionately with a character is that you are very much plugged into that energy, that frequency. Then all of a sudden, you step outside of the job, and you have a bit of a dip in energy. There’s a little bit of, “What’s happening? Wait, one second. Where’s the velocity? Wait, who turned off the engine? What’s going on?” You know? And there’s really none of that here. It’s just a moment to take it all in. That’s when I started seeing the trajectory, the arc, and the evolution of the character. It was fascinating to watch from far away, and also to see how I could apply a little of that into my life.

DEADLINE: Now that we’re at the end of the Season 1 journey, with a satisfying ending if the show doesn’t return for another season, what was your overall experience like?

DE PABLO: Michael and I have talked about it, and we both came up with the same word about our experience. We thought Season 1 of Tony & Ziva was very healing for both of us. We had never really had a conclusion to these characters, and we wanted to give them something that, in the end, was going to be some type of happy ending. And of course, the nature of the characters, too, is such that they’re going to get in trouble. The past will always come back, and they’re always going to be trying to find each other through the adventure, through the miscommunication.

It’s a story about a family trying to remain a family, trying to stay together, trying to be loyal to their feelings. That requires a lot of honesty. Michael and I thought it was a very healing journey for both Michael and Coté as friends to reunite and be able to tackle these characters, but also to be able to give the fans who have been so supportive for so many years something to look forward to and something that has been so well deserved.

DEADLINE: You recently revealed you had become a mom. I’m curious how that experience helped shape Ziva’s relationship with her daughter, Tali (Isla Gie), on the show, if at all?

DE PABLO: Absolutely, in fact, Michael and I talked about it a lot. I don’t think he or I would have been able to really tackle the storyline without understanding that it’s such a huge thing for both of us in our lives. If you look at the character of Ziva, she’s had a lot of loss. I think she tackles motherhood very lovingly, but she’s very protective. There’s a certain innate paranoia that probably comes from her past that is constantly trickling into the relationship, which is something that she’s going to have to manage if we have the great fortune of taking [the series] forward. I think this would be interesting from an audience perspective, because a lot of people can relate.

DEADLINE: Talia is such a fantastic character. Can we discuss her little power moves in the finale, please?! She’s definitely Tony and Ziva’s daughter, and she’s ready to kick butt!

DE PABLO: [Laughs]I knew that would be such a revelation. After Episode 6, you can expect anything from this kid. She’s so good in her body. What you don’t know about Isla Gie, who beautifully plays Tali, is that she is a gymnast, and she comes from the theater world. She’s not only a theater kid, but she’s also like this really wonderful, curious child that’s always asking questions, like, “How do you approach that scene?”

DEADLINE: Can you share an example?

DE PABLO: During Episode 1, we were doing this scene where we were saying goodbye to her at the safe house, and I was pretty emotional in many of the takes. I would have Isla very close to me during a very intimate scene in which I was saying to her, “Whatever you do, Sophie is the person that you have to trust. And whatever she tells you to do, you have to do it.” And she would look at me and ask, “How do you do that?” I was like, “How do I do what?” She explained that she was curious about how I access [those emotions]. So, I said, “All you have to do is open your eyes and stay open to that moment, because you’ll learn so much if you just listen.”

From Episode 1 to Episode 10, you see her curiosity leading her to her incredible evolution as Tali, and that’s all her. There are directors giving her wonderful direction, but she has this innate thing that is her curiosity. She comes from the theater, so she understands actors, and also she lives in her body, so she’s like the perfect kid to be Michael’s funny daughter and Zia’s kick-ass daughter. She is really such a great combo.

DEADLINE: In the finale, there’s a moment where Tony and Ziva ask Tali how she feels about her parents potentially dating again. This may fly under the radar of most, but with all the back and forth between these two adults, it’s easy to forget how important stability is for a child. Why was this tidbit important to you to include?

DE PABLO: I think they both really care about this child, who is wise beyond her years. I think they know that she’s a special kid and that she’s gone through a lot. In Episodes 3 and 4, there’s a beautiful moment in which they both acknowledge that they don’t want to carry the worst of their parents into their parenting. They’re consciously making decisions to be the best versions of themselves so they don’t burden Tali with their past. At the end of the day, she’s a child, and she should be able to live a beautiful life. So they shield her and protect her as much as they can, which also forces them to confront their shadow and their issues, and make them step up to the plate as human beings. They can become the best version of themselves for this kid.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.