The first NCIS show made for streaming will feel different from the rest of the franchise
NCIS: Tony & Ziva has been a long time coming. Consider this: Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) and Ziva David (Cote De Pablo) first shared the screen in the Season 3 premiere of NCIS. That show is about to go into its 23rd season. In fact, that episode aired September 20, 2025. So technically, NCIS: Tony & Ziva is the 20th anniversary of the first meeting of the characters.
But Paramount+’s NCIS: Tony & Ziva, the first of the seven NCIS series to be made exclusively for streaming, is so much more than that. In fact, at times, the show feels like the story these characters never really got to experience on CBS. On NCIS, Ziva left in Season 11. Tony stayed until Season 13, but later left, believing Ziva was dead, so he could raise Tali, a daughter he didn’t know existed until the very episode she showed up.
Fast forward a few years, and it turns out Ziva wasn’t dead. And when she finally settled all her business so it was safe to go back to Tali and Tony, she did just that. That’s where NCIS: Tony & Ziva starts. Except not quite. The show begins in the present, but takes us back to show exactly what happened when Ziva returned and what Tony and Ziva’s relationship has been like since.
In one word? Complicated. And that’s exactly what NCIS: Tony & Ziva is set to unravel: a relationship that Weatherly called “not a will they/won’t they?, but a when will they?” Will they during the course of this show? And how does their now-teenage daughter feel about it?
Below, Tony DiNozzo himself, Michael Weatherly, breaks down the appeal of Tiva, what issues the two have to overcome to become a couple, and the possibility of an NCIS crossover in the future.
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I watched NCIS when Tony and Ziva were on, and remember the visceral reaction from people when Ziva left the show, and then Tony. You’ve surely experienced that in the years since you left the show. What do you want to say to those fans about NCIS: Tony & Ziva? Why do you think they waited for so long? Is it the chemistry, or the fact that Tony and Ziva’s story was left unfinished?
Michael Weatherly: I do think it’s both. I think that if you enjoyed NCIS, you enjoyed the energy of Abby in the lab, the humor of Ducky in autopsy, and the sort of father figure of Gibbs, how he would do anything to protect everyone thing, and how lonely he was in that role as a sort of martyr, almost. And McGee as like the great friend that you wanted to have.
In the first few seasons, DiNozzo was kind of that irritating guy in the office, and you’re like, “Oh, God. That guy.” But Ziva, when she was introduced, added a dimension to Tony that we understood, maybe somewhat through Kate, but I think that Cote really brought such a great energy and curiosity and a kind of international vibe. A Chilean woman playing an Israeli.
And it opened the show up to the world. And it also opened Tony up to more. She seemed to understand him, and that allowed everyone else to kind of go in and follow. Abby would say Tony is kind of like a dog; sometimes he will eat your shoes, and sometimes he humps the furniture, but he doesn’t mean anything, he’s just a puppy.
And so, if Abby thinks you’re OK, then the audience will go with you. But I think that the audience came into Tony and Ziva, and there was this alchemy, and this sort of stickiness. And as it went year by year by year, it was never resolved, and they never went on a date or did anything like that. They kissed undercover a couple of times, yeah, but I think the unresolved nature of that is one reason to watch NCIS: Tony & Ziva.
I also think, if you liked that feeling that you got watching the mothership, that kind of familiar sort of warm feeling in the squad room and with these characters, I think NCIS: Tony & Ziva, this iteration of the show, creates like a new environment with similar things but what we’re seeing are all these other couples, who are a mirror back to Tony and Ziva.
It’s like Tony and Ziva now get to be the mentors. But they’re also being seen by others, in a way that they perhaps can’t see themselves. How would you describe those dynamics?
Weatherly: Yes, yes, and sometimes it’s a little… they don’t even know what other people are seeing. Like, Fruzsi (Anne-Marie Waldeck) is seeing the aura. And she’s like: “Ooh, you guys have like a thing.” The same goes for Martine (Nassima Benchicou) and Jonah (Julian Ovenden), and it goes on and on and on. This show is really about a kind of kaleidoscopic mirror ball; it’s like a hall of mirrors. I think everyone’s seen it.
You referred to the show as not a “will they/won’t they, but a when will they” kind of dynamic. But getting to that point does require Ziva, in particular, to deal with some of her past trauma before they can even attempt to be together. And Tony’s got his own traumas, too. How do they get there?
Weatherly: Yes! They also have to acknowledge their own faults in it, too. And sometimes there’s this protective shell that we put around some aspect of ourselves, and we can’t give that up because then we feel like that’ll make us vulnerable to something. And so, Tony can’t trust that she’s not going to disappear again, or does she have another kid with somebody else that he doesn’t know about? [Weatherly said with a laugh, as if the mere idea was absurd.] So, there’s just this part of him that’s like: “How do I trust you?”
And then on her side of things, she’s like, “Well, you never really trusted me anyway.” So, what’s the point? And I don’t trust anybody in my life; my father sent me to kill my half-brother. And then you’re like, OK, OK.
This is TV, and as fans, we have been waiting so long to see Tony and Ziva come together. Were there ever any discussions about the decision not to have them be together when the show starts instead of what the show went with, which is having the show pick up years after the fact and then showing fans how they got together in flashbacks?
Weatherly: Yes, part of the presentation of the nonlinear time wheel is to give you glimpses of all these moments as the show carries on. It can show you very, very interesting things about them, and then there’s this one episode where the time wheel is used to show another set of characters, and their background.
And then there’s another time wheel episode where we see something from Episodes 3 and 4 that we catch up with later on, and it’s very interesting because there are two things: One is that the show itself is an unreliable narrator. So, we don’t know exactly who to believe, like even Tony’s best friend at Interpol doesn’t believe them. It’s like everyone is questioning everybody.
Then the flip side, or maybe the interior of that is, so what is trust? And who can you trust? And trust comes down to more than facts. It comes down to this kind of faith. And that’s what love and trust are. And so, when you have people holding on to facts and statistics and all this stuff, it’s really interesting.
And the bad guys of the show are damaged people. Unless you’re a true psychopath, which there might be one in the show, who comes out of the womb and you’re just like, “Oh, that guy should go right to prison, from diapers to prison, because he’s just bad, he’s a bad guy.” But most people get shaped by their environment. And this is a show that really looks at how we shape each other and how we can help each other by being the best version of ourselves.
As you’re talking about shaping people, we have to talk about Tali and how Tony and Ziva, the ones we know and the people they’ve become in these past few years, can shape a human being. What type of human being have they raised?
Weatherly: I think Tony thinks he’s a better father than he’s been, because I think he’s been doing two things. I think he’s been fathering so that he wouldn’t be like his father.Sometimes that’s not the best way to parent. And I think he’s also been fathering with some resentment about not being there for the first three years or so. And for Ziva coming back and being like, “Oh, I’m back now, I’ll take over.”Anyone with children knows what that feels like. And so, yeah, there’s so much. I mean, there’s a lot of meat on this bone, as you know, Lizzie.
But then she also probably has some resentment and guilt about the fact that she wasn’t there for years of Tali’s life. So, they’re both carrying these feelings and trying not to take it out on each other, while perhaps taking it out on each other.
Weatherly: Right. That’s the funny thing about this show. I think it’s a great show for binge-watching. But it also works really well episode by episode. If you take a break and then are like, you know, maybe I’ll watch thefirst one again. And then you watch it and you go, “Oh, now I get it.” And then you’re like, I should watch the second one again. And I think that there’s a reason, intellectually, problem-solving-wise, that you might want to watch it again. But then you get pulled into these emotions, and you start having real feels.
And that is the beauty of these two characters. And I feel just lucky to have been a part of it and that the fans have enjoyed this relationship and these challenges that these two star-crossed lovers have, that they want to see more of it. And I’m just very grateful.
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Personally, as an original NCIS fan, I started the show thinking: How does it make sense for Tony and Ziva to get in trouble and not pick up the phone at some point and call McGee or Gibbs? And then, of course, you understand how they wouldn’t want to bring their friends into everything that’s happening. But, is a crossover something you’d want to see in the future?
Weatherly: I think in the initial outing of [NCIS: Tony & Ziva], it was really important that it felt like they were in their own world and that we needed to sort of build and understand that world. Because it’s more grounded in a way. There’s less music telling you how to feel. There are fewer propulsive plot devices, like we’ve got to get to the thing and find them. And just when you are missing that, then all of a sudden, we are doing that. Like the show does do it.
They just do it in a different kind of energy and pattern, and pacing. And so, I think we wanted to figure out what the show was, because it would be weird if suddenly Abby shows up. By the way, I love Pauley Perrette, just from the moment I ran into her. Pauley Perrette is a fantastic human. But we needed to really create the world. And then later, anyone who comes into it, we would have to make it appropriate to the way it feels. And to give somebody a sense of, they would have to watch it and go, “Oh, I get it.”
That’s what we do. Because it’s not, like my DiNozzo shtick, sometimes I’m doing it, I can see myself doing it, and I’m like, “Oh, and it looks like kind of overacting sometimes.” Luckily, in a lot of the circumstances we’re in, DiNozzo is acting. So, he’s acting like somebody else in the episode with the couple in the Swiss chalet [Episode 3, titled “Cover Story”], but when you see him being earnest, you’re like, “Oh, there’s that guy.”
But I don’t know, did it feel very different to you than the mothership? Which character would you bring in?
Jimmy would make sense, but Deeks would just be fun.
[Weatherly laughs in agreement]
Short pitch for NCIS: Tony & Ziva, what are fans getting?
Weatherly: I feel like we are going to give the fans what they want, and what they also didn’t even know they were going to get.
NCIS: Tony & Ziva will premiere Thursday, Sept. 4 on Paramount+ with three episodes, then one new episode weekly on Thursdays after that.
