‘NCIS: Tony & Ziva’ Stars Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo Tease ‘Fast-Paced’ Paramount+ Spinoff (Exclusive)

The long-awaited NCIS spinoff, NCIS: Tony & Ziva, is almost here, and stars Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo spoke to PopCulture.com all about it.

Tony & Ziva marks the first time that Weatherly and de Pablo are on-screen together since the beginning of Season 11 of NCIS.

The two will reprise their fan-favorite titular roles in NCIS: Tony & Ziva, premiering on Sept. 4 on Paramount+. In the spinoff, Tony and Ziva have been raising their daughter, Tali, together in Paris after finally reuniting. After Tony’s security company is attacked, the two must go on the run across Europe, “try to figure out who is after them, and maybe even learn to trust each other again so they can finally have their unconventional happily ever after.”

Along with Weatherly and de Pablo, the series stars Amita Suman, Maximilian Osinski, Lara Rossi, Isla Gie, Nassima Benchicou, Julian Ovenden, Terence Maynard, and James D’Arcy. Produced by CBS Studios, NCIS: Tony & Ziva is executive produced by creator and showrunner John McNamara, Weatherly, de Pablo, Laurie Lieser, Christina Strain, Shelley Meals, and Mairzee Almas.

Keep reading to see what Weatherly and de Pablo had to say about NCIS: Tony & Ziva.

PopCulture: How would you describe NCIS: Tony and Ziva?

Cote de Pablo: Funny enough, it’s a part of the NCIS-verse because, obviously, we spun from the original series. But we have nothing to do with the agency nowadays. So we’re not a part of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. So it’s an acronym that’s used so the audience can recognize that these characters come from that. But really, it’s a Tony and Ziva show. We went through many incantations of a name for this show, and we had all sorts of ideas going back and forth. And we had all sorts of clever things going back and forth.

And I think Paramount and CBS settled on Tony and Ziva because I think that was the most recognizable thing for the franchise, and certainly something that the fans could identify immediately. They knew those names, and so it would be very easy for them to say, “Oh my god. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know what this is about. It’s about Tony and Ziva.”

Michael Weatherly: Also, it’s funny because, let’s say you never watched NCIS a day in your life, and you’re stumbling around Paramount+ or any platform that is carrying the Tony and Ziva show. And you just see, like, ‘Is that Tony and Ziva’s wedding? What is Tony and Ziva? What is that?’ And you just see these two people in an exotic background. And if you watch the trailer and you have no idea, then you’re gonna, I think, even with no information, get a really good idea of what this show is. It’s really fast-paced, rome-action, as they are gonna say romance and action. And I think where it draws from the Mothership and from its genes, what it comes from, an energy that is light and fun, but with some heavy undertones.

I mean, it’s this weird sort of mixture of things that aren’t normally supposed to go together, but in the best tradition of, like, a Hitchcock movie or, like, To Catch a Thief or North by Northwest or James Bond or Mission Impossible. It does all of these things, and it’s kind of a miracle that we got to do it in such a classy way because it looks fantastic.

PC: Speaking of looking fantastic, the series shoots on location in Europe. What was that like?

de Pablo: Oh my god. That was a dream. Michael and I always thought that it should be abroad, just to well, first of all, Tony was going to Paris, and so it just made sense, obviously, that it would be that because the characters, the last thing we heard from them is that they were going to Paris, and that’s where they were gonna be. And so, we always felt that that’s truthfully where it should live. Then we got very lucky, and we were able to secure a European country. At the beginning, it was gonna be Paris, but because of the Olympics, right, chéri, that couldn’t be done?

Weatherly: Yeah. That would have been a little tricky.

de Pablo: Yeah. That would have been tricky. So we found Hungary, which worked because it had a lot of different places within the city, Budapest, that could play for Paris. It could play for a myriad of different locations. I mean, we did have a skeleton crew that went to Paris, and they did a lot of shots in Paris, chasing sequences and running sequences and stuff like that so that it would, of course, be more believable, and I think it added to the show. But it was a dream to answer your question, being there and giving it that world, which we had always imagined. We conjured it. To see it play out in that backdrop was to see it and feel it, which is really important because I think the audience will see it and it’s visually stunning, but they would also feel it, which I think is part of the experience.

PC: Obviously, Tony and Ziva are now parents to a preteen. How was it seeing them as parents and seeing this new side of them? We’ve seen bits and pieces of them being parents individually on NCIS, but this is pretty different.

de Pablo: I think that’s the part that Michael and I talked about a lot. I think, being that we’re both parents, we can obviously relate. But also, I think for us, it was really important to explore the tension of that. Parenting is, of course, the most beautiful thing in the world, but it’s also really challenging. And especially when you’re trying to co-parent, there’s gonna be a lot of different opinions on how to do things and how you go about that. And in this case, not only having different opinions, but certainly mistakes get made along the way, having to diffuse certain emotional situations.

I can think back on an episode, Michael, but you know exactly what I’m talking about, Episodes 5 and 6, where they have a big thing that happens where Tali could potentially get very hurt. And there’s a confrontation between parenting. It’s the exploration of two people obviously loving each other, but protecting this child, first and foremost. It’s all for the sort of the big theme is the family, the protecting the family. So that part was, I think, fun to explore and intense, of course.

Weatherly: I couldn’t ask for a better safe house roomie.

PC: Of course, the show is also filled with a brand new cast. What can fans expect from these new characters and how they fit into the story?

de Pablo: That’s the part that I love because once you get to the middle of Season 1, you actually start getting to know these characters. And that’s where things get very interesting for us. And I think that’s sort of the Michael and Cote of it all because we’ve come from a show that was very much an ensemble show. And we loved the exploration of these characters and sort of figuring out how you build a family. Right? Because you can’t just throw people together and expect it to just sort of organically happen. Some shows, it can happen. In some shows, it doesn’t happen.

It never gels. It never happens. We felt very connected to our cast from the get-go, and I think they felt very much embraced by us. We were really excited to play again, and I think they felt that kind of energy, and they brought the best forward. And we had a lot of fun. We would laugh between takes, and we would have conversations. And I think all of that will become very palpable as the audience keeps watching the different episodes that unfold after, of course, Episode 3.

The first three episodes of NCIS: Tony & Ziva premiere on Thursday, Sept. 4, on Paramount+, followed by a weekly release.