Dennis Smith, a director who has helmed more than 100 episodes across the NCIS franchise, opened up about the real origins of Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David’s slow-burn romance on the latest episode of the “NCIS: Partners & Probies” podcast.
“Her and Michael just sort of always had this slightly contentious relationship because she didn’t put up with any crap from anybody,” Smith recalled on the podcast, hosted by Brian Dietzen, who plays Dr. Jimmy Palmer on NCIS, and Diona Reasonover, who plays Kasie Hines. “They had this almost brother-sister relationship and maybe a little sexual tension.”
It’s been 21 years since NCIS first paired Michael Weatherly’s Tony DiNozzo with Cote de Pablo’s Ziva David, a partnership Movieguide® has followed through every twist, including its eventual walk down the aisle. Movieguide®’s review of the short-lived spinoff NCIS: TONY & ZIVA praised its focus on marriage and parenthood, even while flagging “several annoying, unnecessary strong obscenities and profanities” that kept it geared toward teens and adults only.
Weatherly was part of NCIS from the very beginning, including the two JAG episodes that served as its backdoor pilot, while de Pablo joined at the start of Season 3. Smith said Ziva’s creator, Don Bellisario, “had a general idea” of who she was, but the character kept revealing new layers as the series went on.
“And as the episodes went on, it became just a fuller character,” Smith said.
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Dietzen, who has spent years alongside both actors, compared Ziva and Tony’s dynamic to Tony’s earlier partnership with Kate Todd, played by Sasha Alexander, calling that pairing more “I’m going to try and get her; I’m going to try and get him.” Once real tension crept into the DiNozzo-David partnership, Dietzen said, “That wick just burned for a long, long time.”
Indeed it did. Tony and Ziva didn’t share a real kiss until de Pablo exited the show in Season 11, and fans didn’t learn the two had a daughter together until two years later, when Weatherly left the mothership. Ziva had hidden the pregnancy from Tony, faking her own death rather than telling him the truth, and NCIS didn’t reveal she’d survived until three years after that.
The Paramount+ spinoff NCIS: TONY & ZIVA picked up that unfinished business, exploring why the reunited couple’s relationship stalled out the first time around. Paramount+ pulled the plug after just one season, but Movieguide® reported that the finale still gave Tony and Ziva what the stars themselves called a “happily ever after.”
Weatherly is now set to return to NCIS for a season-long arc, though there’s no word yet on whether de Pablo will join him. For a couple whose chemistry took eight seasons just to earn a kiss, Christian viewers who have stuck with Tony and Ziva through grief, secrets and a faked death might see something familiar in their story: real love rarely arrives on schedule, and patience with the people God puts in our path can pay off in ways we don’t expect.
NCIS returns for its Season 24 premiere Tuesday, Oct. 6, at 8/7c on CBS.
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