

“Part of the problem with the rest of us being left or saddled with answering this question to other people is that it’s really not an answer.” “At the end of the day, not only can you not make decisions for other people, but often you can’t understand theirs,” says Perrette, who says she would not leave her “dream job” under any circumstances. She called Harmon first and got the news.

Perrette told reporters she got the news de Pablo was leaving one morning when she woke up to several text messages from fellow cast members and producers. She, Weatherly, Harmon and veteran actor David McCallum (chief medical examiner David “Ducky” Mallard) have been with the popular drama all 11 seasons. Weatherly is part of what his co-star, Pauley Perrette (forensic specialist Abby Sciuto), calls the “Core Four” of the series. “When you’re not lactating, you’re not interesting.” The new boy only has eyes for his mom, says the 45-year-old actor. Having two children under the age of 2 “is like having 30,” he says. The couple have two children, a 19-month old girl named Olivia and a baby boy named Liam, born just a few weeks ago. Weatherly’s life became a lot more settled after he met his second wife, Bojana Jankovic, at a rock concert in Vancouver in 2009. “We never really saw that side of Ziva because she was always kicking people in the face.” He says he’ll miss her sense of humour on the set. While Weatherly and others seem to have their lives lined up for now, “Cote’s still figuring out the life part,” he says.
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Weatherly suggested that de Pablo was simply at a different stage in her personal life than some of her more settled cast members, “No weddings, no funerals, no birthdays,” he said of the long hours and total commitment a 22-episode network TV drama demands. He quotes Oscar Wilde’s line, “Life is too important to be taken seriously.” The New York native can never stay serious for too long. “It’s a very tough commitment,” says Weatherly, who adds, “Boo-hoo, go cry in a bag of money.” The actress simply wanted a break from the series. All involved insist that that’s not the case. There was the usual speculation at first that de Pablo’s departure was a negotiating ploy that she was holding out for more money. As Harmon noted, she had been with the cast eight seasons. De Pablo’s arrival led to a sharp upturn in popularity for the series. Still, Wickersham has some big shoes to fill. “We’re all intrigued and satisfied with the actress.” “We’re thrilled to have her,” Mark Harmon, who plays DiNozzo’s boss Leroy “Jethro” Gibbs, told the same reporters one day earlier. “I think the audience is going to be extremely interested and rewarded,” says Weatherly. 19 episode, the arrival of a new actress and a new love interest for DiNozzo: Emily Wickersham, who joins the cast full-time as NSA analyst Eleanor “Ellie” Bishop, a specialist in international terrorism and global preparation. This leads to some soul searching and then, next Tuesday, on the Nov. “Kind of like you don’t know what you’re missing till it’s gone,” he says.


What happens next? Weatherly says his character is finally getting in touch with feelings he never knew he had. That connection ended with de Pablo’s departure. He compared the big orange squad room on NCIS to the newsroom in the classic film His Girl Friday, with DiNozzo and Ziva having an intense love-hate connection like Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in the movie. While it was “never a love story, never rolling over and pillow talk,” there was always a great deal of chemistry between the characters. “It was really with the arrival of Cote that I think something special happened there,” Weatherly told a gathering of international press earlier this month. Ziva and Weatherly’s character, senior special agent Anthony DiNozzo, had a long-running will-they, won’t-they relationship on the show. The producers wanted her back, but de Pablo stuck to her guns and walked away from TV’s No. BEVERLY HILLS, CA-It took Michael Weatherly to finally explain his former co-star Cote de Pablo’s departure from NCIS.Īfter eight seasons as special agent Ziva David, de Pablo announced last June she would not return to the series.
