Cote de Pablo, Pauley Perrette, Michael Weatherly, Mark Harmon: the majority of the “NCIS” cast ended up leaving the show for various reasons. Throwback to the departure of Cote de Pablo who played Ziva David for seven years and 194 episodes.
While some left NCIS to simply move on, others did so for more personal reasons, as SensaCine reminds us. Pauley Perrette, for example, said goodbye to her beloved Abby Sciuto character by publicly declaring that she suffered a physical assault and forever closing her chapter on the show. “No, I would never come back. Please stop asking” she wrote to her followers on Twitter.
Cote de Pablo, meanwhile, made her debut in the series during season 3 to play Ziva David, a character of first importance who will remain so for 7 seasons. However, in 2013, the actress quit the show as her character was left for dead in a bombing. She said at the time that she did it for “personal” reasons without giving more details, admitting however that it was an extremely difficult and terrifying decision (TVGuide).
However, in 2016, the actress finally explained her reasons during a Q&A:
Unfortunately, due to political things and scripts that weren’t good enough, I chose not to [retourner dans la série]. Listen, I love this character! I worked for eight years to create [Ziva] and when i felt like the character wasn’t being treated with the respect she deserved… they were going to fire [Ziva] in Israel and make her an unhappy and miserable woman.
She also adds that she did it for female fans of the series: “I thought that was not fair. […] I told them that until someone can write something really fantastic for Ziva, I’m not coming back.”
AN OPEN DOOR
Despite the actress’s refusal, the chain preferred to leave a door open in case they could get along again. The character’s death occurred behind the scenes while Ziva was in hiding during a mission in Israel. So many fans refused to believe it and they were right.
In season 16 of NCIS, it was discovered that Ziva survived the explosion and faked her own death. Wishing to protect her family, she had indeed decided to stay away in case she was prosecuted again. Previously, in season 13, Tony (Micheal Weatherly) found out they had a daughter together and left the team to take care of her. The character’s story was thus developed without the actress, and by 2019, she was happy enough with where her character had come to return.
From then on, in season 17, Tony and Ziva got together again – off camera though. Michael Weatherly had indeed already left the show and was not available to shoot the scene, too busy with his Bull series. This one being now finished, the fans still hope to be able to see the two characters side by side. Who knows…
Watch NCIS: Special Investigations streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Paramount+.