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Cote de Pablo and Michael Weatherly dropped into Cannes to talk NCIS: Tony & Ziva and gave the MIPCOM crowd a surprise first look at their upcoming Paramount+ series. In the clip, Weatherly’s Anthony DiNozzo could be seen bouncing off car bonnets, as he and de Pablo’s Ziva David indulged in their usual snappy dialogue and locations including Paris flashed on screen.
The NCIS stars joined Paramount Global’s Chief Content Licensing Officer and President of Republic Pictures Dan Cohen for his MIPCOM keynote, bringing some U.S. star power to Cannes. Cohen brought the business to proceedings by spelling out how NCIS is a serious earner for Paramount Global Content Distribution. “Keep in mind there are 1,000 episodes — we’ve done over four and a half billion dollars of licensing on NCIS,” he said.
Cohen’s keynote got off to a madcap start as Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob and Bill Fagerbakke, the voice of Patrick Star in SpongeBob SquarePants, introduced the veteran exec with a short skit in character.
When they took to the stage, De Pablo and Weatherly shared the short teaser clip and then got into the weeds on their new show.
NCIS: Tony & Ziva picks up after Ziva’s supposed death when Tony left the NCIS team to go raise their daughter. Years later, Ziva was discovered alive, leading her to complete one final mission with NCIS before she was reunited with Tony and their daughter in Paris. Since then, Tony and Ziva have been raising their daughter, Tali, together. When Tony’s security company is attacked, they must go on the run across Europe.
In the clip Ziva tells their daughter: “If anyone tries to hurt us, we’ve planned for it.”
“We haven’t seen these characters since 2013 and I think the fans have always wanted to see what happened between them,” said de Pablo. “In our first season, they’re going to get a fix of what has happened.”
Asked why the series came about, the actors and series exec producers said they had experienced huge recognition around the world from fans and that made the international setting feel right.
Weatherly added that when they started out they had no idea that characters would be on the air over 20 years later. He said that the series will have an “international, global feel”, given the location and shoots, which took in Budapest and other European destinations.
Before the Tony and Ziva show somewhat took over, Cohen had kicked off his session by announcing that rights for a new movie had been snagged for Republic Pictures, the revived label he runs as President. The label has taken North America on Adulthood, the latest project from Alex Winter, who helms and appears in the movie. The cast also includes Josh Gad (Gutenberg! The Musical!), Kaya Scodelario (The Gentlemen), Billie Lourd (Booksmart) and Anthony Carrigan (Barry).
Billed as a darkly comic, modern-noir, it follows a brother and sister who when they discover a dead body, long buried in their parents’ basement, the are pulled back to the hometown they ran away from and into a rabbit hole of crime and murder.
Cohen said Republic Pictures is in the market for “interesting indie films to complement the huge tentpoles the studio has.”
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TV Guide, December 23
Cover: NCIS -- Ziva’s Happily Ever After -- Cote de Pablo
Page 1: Contents
Page 2: Ask Matt -- Dancing with the Stars, Grey’s Anatomy, Your Feedback, Coming Next Issue -- 2020 preview
Page 3: Fans show big love for Alex Trebek
Page 4: What was left of the Golden Globes’ nominees list? The best of network TV
Page 6: Family -- John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch, Clifford the Big Red Dog
Page 7: Nature Cat: A Nature Carol, America’s Funniest Home Videos
Page 8: Matt Roush’s Top 10 of 2019
Page 14: Cover Story -- Will Ziva get her happily ever after?
Page 16: The Awesome Year in TV
Page 20: Stars We Loved and Lost -- Katherine Helmond by Tony Danza
Page 21: Luke Perry by Shannen Doherty
Page 22: Diahann Carroll by Matt Bomer
Page 23: Tim Conway by Vicki Lawrence
Page 24: What’s Worth Watching -- Week 1 -- the soaps celebrate Christmas
Page 25: Monday, December 23 -- 12 Days of Pol, Let’s Make a Deal, His Dark Materials, Pawn Stars, Tuesday, December 24 -- Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, World’s Wildest Weather, Christmas Eve Mass
Page 26: Wednesday, Christmas 25 -- NBA Christmas Day, Mork & Mindy, When Calls the Heart: Home for Christmas, Call the Midwife Holiday Special
Page 27: Thursday, December 26 -- Happy New Year Charlie Brown, Doctor Who, The Interrogator, Friday, December 27 -- Craft in America, Ghost Loop, The Simpsons, My Days of Mercy
Page 28: Saturday, December 28 -- Father Dowling Mysteries, Deadly Hollywood Obsession, A New Year’s Resolution, Austin City Limits 6th Annual Hall of Fame Honors, College Football, Sunday, December 29 -- Flirty Dancing, Dare Me, Lost in the Wild
Page 44: Streaming Guide -- Netflix -- You, Michelle Monaghan on Messiah, Lost in Space
Page 45: Hulu -- Burden of Truth, Better Things, Younger, Preacher
Page 46: New Movie Releases
Page 47: Series, Specials and Documentaries
Page 49: What’s Worth Watching -- Week 2 -- Last Man Standing
Page 51: Monday, December 30 -- Law & Order: SVU, Twin Turbos, Tuesday, December 31 -- Live Countdowns to 2020, The Twilight Zone, Schitt’s Creek, New York Philharmonic New Year’s Eve 2019: Sondheim Celebration
Page 52: Wednesday, January 1 -- Supernanny, Alaska PD, NHL Hockey, Thursday, January 2 -- The First 48, Christina on the Coast, My Feet Are Killing Me, Deputy
Page 53: Friday, January 3 -- Hawaii Five-O and Magnum P.I., Love After Lockup: Life After Lockup, Country Music
Page 54: Saturday, January 4 -- Say Yes to the Dress America, Homeland, NFL Football, Sunday, January 5 00 The 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards, Sister Wives, NFL Football
Page 72: The Year in Cheers & Jeers
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Alright, so here goes nothing:
“Past, Present and Future” just leaves me so conflicted.
On the one hand, taken on its own, there are things I find so lovely about it.
I think all the Tony-Ziva scenes are so rich with feeling and subtext and history, and the actors knocked them out of the park.
I love that Ziva was finally allowed to grieve for so many of the traumas of her past. For her father, for her sister, for her mother, and perhaps more importantly, for Ari. Because that’s been the elephant in the room for years, and the effect it had on her was always brushed under the rug, unless it was to place blame and accuse her of being a stone-cold killer. So now she’s allowed to acknowledge the pain and the guilt and the sadness. Along with the dreams she lost and those she hasn’t dreamt yet and everything in between. And all of this is on-screen.
[putting the rest under a cut because this got way longer than I anticipated]
Not surprisingly, I love all the Tony-Ziva moments, because as painful as they are, they also give us those two at their best together, performance-wise. It was a tour de force of Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo feeding off each other and pouring their hearts out on-screen, and it really was some of their best work to that point in the series. You could feel how much the characters cared for one another, yearned for each other, were desperate for each other, but ultimately let each other go out of respect for their wishes. It’s not the way we wanted it to go, and arguably not the way it should have gone, but there’s no denying that at the very least, it gave us some top-notch performances in their swan song. (Sniff.)
And while I wish Ziva could have gotten closure with all of the team, I have to admit that if they were only going to let her have scenes with one character, I’m glad it was Tony, because that was the story that seemed to have left the most unresolved at the end of the previous season. (Because Ziva and Tony were totally together, we’ve been through this already.)
It’s really sad that the story ended the way it did, and that Cote de Pablo had to leave the way she did, because yes, it absolutely through a wrench into whatever the next phase was supposed to be. And I recognize that the writers, in some ways, were caught between a rock and hard place when at the eleventh hour (I assume) they had to completely change their arc for the upcoming season to adjust for her departure, and that couldn’t have been easy. We may not have wanted Ziva to leave, but they probably didn’t either, and they had no choice but to write her out.
And taken on its own, Ziva having a crisis of faith isn’t so out of left-field to me, because like I said, she’d been through a lot, especially in the last year, and at some point, this was bound to come out one way or another. I’ve said in the past that this would have made more sense to me on the heels of Eli’s death, and not over six months later, but who would I be to judge someone’s grieving process were they actual real people and not fictional? And, again, the writers had to write her out somehow, so I suppose this makes sense in that respect.
But then, there are so many frustrating aspects about this arc, and this episode, too.
Like, for instance, that this is in fact Cote de Pablo’s last episode, and Ziva is in all of what, three scenes? It’s like the show decided to shoehorn her into this other plot with SecNav which, don’t even get me started because I’ve watched the episode three times and I still don’t understand what the fuck that’s all about, nor do I care. (Sorry.) I’m glad we got as much as we did because the show/CBS could have easily decided not to let her get any closure whatsoever, but it’s unfortunate that it was done in such a disjointed manner.
And while it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Ziva would cut off all contact with her NCIS family, because she’s done it before, it still seems to ignore all the growth she’d made in the years since the last time she’d left, and that’s probably my biggest gripe with all of this. The Ziva who’d forged her own path, who made new friends and a new family and a fresh start, away from her father’s influence, now suddenly decided to throw that all away? Especially when we find out what really happens next?
It’s a qualm I had about the Bodnar arc, too: that to me at least, it would have been way more compelling if after all her soul-searching, Ziva realized that this time, going after revenge wasn’t the answer, because that was never going to solve anything or fulfill what she was searching for. That what she learned from her time with the team was that justice and vengeance were two different things, and the latter would do nothing to soothe her soul. (Which is why she ends up doing a whole Eat Pray Love thing afterwards.)
So yes, it’s true that we didn’t see what happened between the time she sent Tony that text inviting him to Israel and the time he finally showed up at her door three months later, and presumably whatever it was was Bad. Bad enough to scare the shit out of spy ninja Ziva. That may explain why she wanted to then cut herself off and deal with her shit, which is admirable in some respects. But unfortunately due to real-life constraints, there wasn’t really any build-up to it. It is jarring compared to the Ziva we last saw at the end of season 10, who was content and fired up for whatever came next.
I realize my perspective is different, because I wasn’t watching this in real time like you folks. If I had been, man, I would have been raging for months. I’m not angry about it because I knew what would come next, but now seeing it in context, it does make me sad for the characters, because they did deserve better. They deserved to be happy and maybe even sad but all of those things together, and they should have had their own happy ending. But instead everything hurts, and we won’t even know how much until three seasons later.
So, to sum up: I wish things had ended differently. I wish Ziva found her purpose and her family and did it with the team by her side. And I wish Tony got to be the man he wanted to be here, and grew into his new role in this newly-fulfilled partnership. But we can’t have nice things and neither can they. At least, though, we got the little we did get, and that’s no small feat. Because they could have completely thrown the baby out with the bathwater, but instead, at least these two got a proper goodbye. And we had those lovely scenes in the orchard and on the tarmac to see them off. That kiss is absolutely everything, and it’s a crying shame we never got more of them, but now we’ve got gifs that will live in infamy, as solace.
I am going to stop myself here and regroup. But what a wild ride, guys.
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NCIS spinoff, NCIS: TONY & ZIVA, will premiere next year, and there’s a lot for fans to get excited for.
“Their episodes are just magic. Their chemistry is undeniable. They are absolute fan favorites,” Paramount’s chief content licensing office Dan Cohen said of the NCIS couple. “Yes, they’ve done a few cameos, but they have not been together on air for 12 years, and this is the story fans asked about the most.”
Ziva, played by Cote de Pablo, last appeared in Season 17 of the flagship show, and Season 21 was the last time fans saw Tony, played by Michael Weatherly.
“…the upcoming spinoff’s main events will take place in modern times but with a caveat per a new report from Deadline…NCIS: TONY & ZIVA will pick up after Ziva’s supposed death and Tony’s departure from MCRT,” Screen Rant reported. “It will then tackle subsequent events until Tony’s security firm in Paris is attacked. De Pablo says that it’s part of giving viewers answers about the characters’ fates after they left the main show.”
“I think the fans have always wanted to see what happened between [Tony and Ziva]…We find them in Europe raising their child, who’s almost a teenager, fantastic little Tali, and they are trying to make their relationship work,” de Pablo commented.
Weatherly added, “I had the opportunity, with NCIS, to travel to Australia, Italy and Germany and England and France, and it became this very clear, international show. It’s that global impact… It’s about a family in jeopardy, in peril, trying to find a way to do the right thing, inhaling circumstances, two people trying to communicate, two people trying to love each other.”
“In the original series, which premiered in 2003, Ziva and Tony finally got together in Season 10. The two evidently slept together only for Ziva to decide to stay in Israel as Tony returned to the United States,” TODAY reported. “Nearly two years later, in the Season 13 finale, Tony is informed that Ziva died in an explosion at her Tel Aviv home and left behind a daughter — their daughter — named Tali. He then leaves NCIS to go raise their child.” READ MORE: EVERYTHING TO KNOW ABOUT NCIS: TONY & ZIVA
NCIS: TONY & ZIVA is expected to make its streaming debut on Paramount+ in 2025.
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