NCIS: Tony & Ziva Stars Reveal Mark Harmon Noticed Their Chemistry on Set: ‘This Is Rare Air’ (Exclusive) md24

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Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo have an undeniable chemistry.

The pair have reunited for the NCIS: Tony & Ziva spinoff over a decade after last working together on the original series. Still, they tell PEOPLE it was like no time passed when they were back together.

“With Cote, working together is always, for me, it’s a ticket to ride as the Beatles would say,” Weatherly, 57, explains. “Because I am given the freedom to be vulnerable, and to tell the truth, and to show myself. Our show is really about trust.”

“I think we never [were] pretending to be something,” Pablo, 45, notes. “It was very early on, the [walls] had to come down. Because if not, we couldn’t do it.”

Cote De Pablo as Ziva David and Michael Weatherly as Tony Dinozzo In NCIS: Tony & Ziva

The co-stars also reveal that this show is a long time in the making, and they were just as eager as the audience to see Tony and Ziva share a screen again.

“The idea that we were going to go back and explore the relationship between them, that was the thing that really kind of inspired us,” Pablo shares. “That was the thing that, throughout all of those years while the pandemic was going on, Michael and I would get on the phone. He was in New York, I was in Los Angeles, and we’d talk and talk and talk incessantly about, ‘Well, what do you think is this? What do you think is that?’”

“Then of course, we’d go on into personal tangents about life,” she laughs. “Our language really lived in the exploration of honesty and confronting things that at times were uncomfortable, certainly, or that would make the normal human being very uncomfortable. That’s where Michael and I live. That’s where you and I live, Michael. I don’t think we could do the superficial thing.”

Weatherly admits that he and Pablo have a unique chemistry that often shows through in their scenes.

“This journey with Cote — it starts and stops with when we look at each other,” the Bull alum says. “If I’m not telling the truth, it’s over… she will just call me [out].”

He adds: “That’s what I love so much about working with Cote. Because sometimes the next line that comes out of my mouth is, ‘I have no response to that,’ or, ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Then that’s not what was written, but it ends up being in the show, because that’s Tony’s response to Ziva, which is like, she has his number, and he has her number.”

Pablo remembers when they worked together on “the mothership,” cast and crew knew not to get in the way of their tiffs when their on and off-screen personas started to blur.

“If somebody came up to me or Cote, like a director or a writer, and tried to tell us what our character was thinking or feeling, that was a bad idea,” Weatherly reveals. “If you’re telling Cote, ‘Oh, so Cote, Ziva is feeling this in this moment,’ that’s like…”

“To be fair, luckily we had a lot of repeat directors,” Pablo chimes in. “On the mothership, certainly we knew that we could trust the people that were directing us because they knew that we knew.”

Weatherly admits that he and Pablo have a unique chemistry that often shows through in their scenes.

“This journey with Cote — it starts and stops with when we look at each other,” the Bull alum says. “If I’m not telling the truth, it’s over… she will just call me [out].”

He adds: “That’s what I love so much about working with Cote. Because sometimes the next line that comes out of my mouth is, ‘I have no response to that,’ or, ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Then that’s not what was written, but it ends up being in the show, because that’s Tony’s response to Ziva, which is like, she has his number, and he has her number.

Pablo remembers when they worked together on “the mothership,” cast and crew knew not to get in the way of their tiffs when their on and off-screen personas started to blur.

“If somebody came up to me or Cote, like a director or a writer, and tried to tell us what our character was thinking or feeling, that was a bad idea,” Weatherly reveals. “If you’re telling Cote, ‘Oh, so Cote, Ziva is feeling this in this moment,’ that’s like…”

“To be fair, luckily we had a lot of repeat directors,” Pablo chimes in. “On the mothership, certainly we knew that we could trust the people that were directing us because they knew that we knew.”

While Weatherly calls the dynamic “unusual” for most sets, it became the norm on NCIS.

“Mark Harmon told us, ‘Guys, this is rare air,’ when we were doing it,” he recalls. “Because there was a real — I know it’s like a procedural drama, and we’re talking about it like it’s freakin’, like, Chekhov.”

“By the way, Michael, I think for us, it was Chekhov,” Pablo jokes, referring to the famed Russian playwright.

“It was very rare, and we understand it,” she later acknowledges. “That’s why I think doing [NCIS: Tony & Ziva] is so special, because we have two characters who are loved. And we get questions about their relationship all the time. At the end of the day, they were spun off that very creative, magical little time.”

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