John McNamara also tells TheWrap about fulfilling Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo’s vision for the Paramount+ spinoff
Note: This story contains spoilers from “NCIS: Tony & Ziva.”
“NCIS: Tony & Ziva” brought back one of television’s most beloved ships for a new international adventure full of banter, action and complicated feelings. The pilot almost looked very different, however, after series creator John McNamara said the episode’s big car chase was not a part of the original script.
The Paramount+ series, starring Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo as the characters who kept audiences hooked for more than a decade on “NCIS,” catches up to Tony and Ziva in the new lives they’ve created in Paris as they co-parent their daughter Tali (Isla Gie). The couple is not currently together, and seem to believe they never will be again.
Viewers learn that Tony has been working at a private security firm with ties to Interpol, and is caught in a high-speed chase after an emergency call from a client. McNamara said the stunt was actually filmed after original production had wrapped. The original pilot featured Tony talking about the stunt instead, which McNamara called “the most basic mistake you can make as a writer.”
“You don’t tell, you show,” McNamara told TheWrap. “Thank God I had the resources to correct it.”
And those resources paid off. McNamara said the “humongous” chase scene used 40 precision stunt drivers and 120 stunt people from all over Europe. It helps establish the high-stakes at the center of the “NCIS: Tony & Ziva” from the start, an ambitious project from Paramount+ and CBS Studios that expands the storied “NCIS” franchise into streaming.
And it does so by leaving the procedural template behind for a sprawling international crime thriller plot, “NCIS”-style.
“One of my favorite things about ‘NCIS’ is that it’s a serious show that’s very, very funny, and the funny comes from the characters and their interplay,” McNamara said. “I want to hold on to that, but I also want to go a little bit deeper, because we’re only telling one story over 10 hours.”
And this particular story is a huge deal for “NCIS” fans. It reunites viewers with the fan-favorite couple that once pulled at their heartstrings with their will-they-won’t-they dynamic, one that was not fully resolved the last time Ziva David reunited with her family after a traumatic years-long mission in the back in 2019.
The new series takes place in 2025, but addresses questions fans have been asking for years. McNamara said it was essential for the show to address the time that has passed and how each central character has changed.
“These are grown ups [who] haven’t resolved a lot of their issues,” he said. “[We thought] what would happen if we started them out not together, but an adventure forced to be together and then we just start with that.
Following up Tony and Ziva’s story was a passion project for Weatherly and de Pablo for a long time, and they were committed to waiting until the right story and time to pursue it. Weatherly and McNamara are longtime friends and had worked together on a limited series pitch for Paramount+ that did not move forward. When those plans fell through, McNamara said Weatherly asked him to join in discussions about an “NCIS” spinoff. A conversation over Zoom with de Pablo then sealed the deal for the three of them.
The duo and McNamara worked closely with the show’s writers to develop a compelling story with “NCIS: Tony & Ziva.” He’s particularly fond of de Pablo’s pitch for the opening scene of the show, which features Tony and Ziva in a wedding tux and dress, respectively, seemingly gearing up for the altar — when it’s later revealed that she is walking toward someone else and it might be part of an elaborate mission.
McNamara was delighted by the idea, and flustered after de Pablo left the writers to plot out how their mission would end up there later in the season. “Day 1 in the writers room, I said ‘Guys, I have no idea why we’re opening with this wedding but we’re going to figure it out.’”
The goal for all involved was to provide a story that will delight original Tiva fans and draw in new audiences. Now, viewers get to see for themselves.
