Cote De Pablo as and Michael Weatherly on ‘NCIS: Tony & Ziva’.Credit: Marcell Piti/Paramount+

Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo shared plenty of intimate scenes during their nine seasons together on NCIS. And the stars behind fan-favorite characters Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David say it’s precisely that history which led them to turn down the use of an intimacy coordinator for their upcoming spinoff series NCIS: Tony & Ziva.

“They asked me first, I think because I’m a female and blah, blah, blah, and I said, ‘I don’t need one. Thank you for offering,’” de Pablo said in a new interview with TV Insider. “Michael and I have a lot of trust with each other and are great friends. So, when it comes to shooting these things, we don’t want to be micromanaged. We like to explore it, and we trust each other enough that we allow that to happen.”

Cote de Pablo and Michael Weatherly at EW’s studio at San Diego Comic-Con 2025.Photograph by Jonny Marlow

Weatherly was with NCIS from the jump, appearing as one of six characters featured in the 2003 JAG episodes “Ice Queen” and “Meltdown,” which went on to serve as a backdoor pilot for NCIS. The moment his wisecracking, sometimes arrogant field agent Tony first lays eyes on de Pablo’s Israeli liaison officer Ziva, it was over. The characters immediately fell into bed, sparking a decades-long romance and eventually producing a child after de Pablo left NCIS in season 11.

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The newest trailer for NCIS: Tony & Ziva, which dropped at San Diego Comic-Con 2025, shows that things are certainly heating back up for Tiva. The trailer teases several intimate scenes and even shows Ziva in a wedding gown, though their characters still maintain an ambiguous connection in the footage shown from one of the first season’s early episodes. If there was a time for some Tiva coordination, it would be now. But Weatherly deferred to de Pablo, who was firm they had everything they needed.

“I said, ‘Whatever Cote wants.’ Love scenes are complicated because that level of nonverbal communication — you kiss someone the way you want to be kissed or you touch someone the way you want to be touched — that is a deep level of communication,” Weatherly told TV Insider. “Physical interaction starts with trust. Luckily, Cote and I do not have an issue in that area. We had to do that right out of the gate in [NCIS‘ ‘Under Covers’] episode.”

Weatherly and de Pablo recently revisited that season 3 episode of the flagship series, which begins with a memorable intimate scene, when they stopped by Entertainment Weekly‘s Comic-Con video studio to discuss Tony & Ziva.

The scene finds Tony and Ziva wrapped up in silken sheets in a hotel room out on assignment, rolling around, teasing each other, and enjoying the flames of initial attraction. De Pablo arrived on NCIS with about two decades less screen acting experience than Weatherly, and recalled him helping her learn the ropes.

Cote De Pablo and Michael Weatherly on ‘Tony & Ziva’.Marcell Piti/Paramount+

“The scene where he’s on top of me, my head is like this, right? So the cameras are a certain way,” she recalled. “He started holding, literally just holding my head up so I looked better and so the light could find my face. Of course, I’m not an expert like he is. I don’t know about cameras. I don’t know anything about acting. And I’m going, ‘Why is he tilting my head?’”

Weatherly explained that he “did a lot of soap operas when I was a young actor, like 500 episodes or something. So you learn to make sure that everyone is okay in terms of lighting and in terms of clearing for cameras.”

They’ll take that early experience and plenty more into NCIS: Tony & Ziva, which premieres three episodes on Sept. 4, with new episodes to follow weekly on Paramount+.