Ziva David
Ziva David is a fictional character from the CBS television series NCIS, portrayed by actress Cote de Pablo. Ziva first appeared in the season 3 premiere episode, "Kill Ari ", and became a regular cast member from the episode "Silver War". She replaced Caitlin "Kate" Todd, who was killed at the hands of Ziva's half-brother, Ari Haswari, in the season 2 finale. Following the onscreen death of the character's father in season 10, Gabi Coccio recurrently portrayed a young Ziva in flashbacks.
Ziva is introduced to the show as an Israeli citizen, an agent of the Kidon unit of the Mossad, a daughter of Mossad Director Eli David, and a friend of NCIS Director Jenny Shepard. She was assigned to NCIS as a liaison officer in an arrangement between Eli and Jenny, a position she held for four years until she returned to Mossad in the season 6 finale, "Aliyah". After being captured by terrorists in Somalia while on assignment for Mossad and presumed dead, she was eventually saved by Gibbs, Tony, and McGee, who brought her back to America. These events led to her resigning from Mossad, applying to become an NCIS agent, and being sworn in as a U.S. citizen.
On July 10, 2013, CBS Television Studios announced that Cote de Pablo would be leaving NCIS during season 11. That fall, De Pablo appeared in two episodes as a series regular to wrap up her character's storyline. In season 13, Ziva was apparently killed off screen, though executive producer and show runner Gary Glasberg suggested that she might still be alive. In season 16, Ziva was confirmed to still be alive, and De Pablo returned in season 17 as a guest star for several episodes.
Outside of fiction, the cultural impact of Ziva became a subject of discussion among various critics, with academics and rabbis weighing in on the matter. Newspapers such as The Jerusalem Post cited her as the only full-time Israeli character on an American mainstream network television show, and Harvard preceptor Eitan Kensky identified her as the "most prominent televisual Israeli" in the United States. Her depiction was generally praised for exposing the Western public to Israeli society and culture, its positive portrayal of an Israeli, and its "cheerleading for American ties to Israel". The role made de Pablo the second most popular actress on U.S. primetime television in 2013, according to Q Score, and a 2013 study by E-Poll Market Research listed her among the top 10 most appealing celebrities in America.
Character creation and casting
's character Kate Todd was killed in the second NCIS season finale following Alexander's decision to permanently leave the show. Shortly afterwards, series creator Donald Bellisario announced plans to replace Todd with another female lead. At the time, he stated that the new character would be "quite different" from the previous and of an undecided foreign nationality—"I want to go for a European or Australian girl who is very comfortable with her femininity and sexuality."Before joining the cast of NCIS, Cote de Pablo, who lived in New York at the time, had performed primarily in the theatre. She was intended to portray one of the lead female roles in a 2005 Broadway musical version of The Mambo Kings and had turned down other television roles to stay with it. However, the production was cancelled in June after a trial engagement in San Francisco and two days later de Pablo was asked to audition for a role on NCIS.
De Pablo later said that the character was simply described as a generic eastern European woman and that she had used a Czech accent when auditioning. Over 50 actresses reportedly auditioned for the role, and another actress with a longer résumé had initially been the frontrunner. During a screen test, de Pablo and other actresses were paired with Michael Weatherly, who went offscript by brushing her hair back and commenting, "You remind me of Salma Hayek." De Pablo described her response as follows: "I dismissed him completely. My primary thought was, 'Don't let this guy get physically close to you.' And, at that moment, everybody in the room started laughing and thought it was the funniest thing in the world because the chemistry between the two characters was perfect." Co-executive producer Charles Floyd Johnson remarked that de Pablo won the role of Ziva for her reaction to Weatherly's departure from the script, saying, "When you get actors who really listen and respond organically in the moment to what they're hearing, sometimes magic happens. They really seemed to get that immediately, and that doesn't always happen."
The character's nationality was changed to Israeli after de Pablo was cast. She was also rewritten as a Mossad agent and Ari Haswari's half-sister, with creators originally planning for her to be Interpol or Royal Australian Navy. De Pablo later added, "I was one of the last to audition, and I don't think they had a clear idea of what they wanted. So I interpreted Ziva as a cool, competent woman, not the usual Hollywood sex symbol with big boobs, but who was comfortable in her own sexuality and used to working with men on an equal footing. It helped that by my looks, I could be taken for almost any nationality." She has also said that Ziva is based on an Israeli woman that she had known prior to joining the series.
Producers cast child actress Gabi Coccio, then aged 13, to portray a young Ziva for a flashback in the tenth season episode "Shiva" in 2013. According to Coccio's father, this was "her first national appearance and first on a show like this". She reprised the role later that season in "Berlin", this time appearing in several flashbacks. During the show's summer hiatus, she confirmed via Twitter that she would appear again in the eleventh season.
Biography
Childhood and early years in Mossad
Born in Be'er Sheva, Israel on November 12, 1982, Ziva is one of three children fathered by the fictional Mossad Director Eli David, the other two being Ari, an older half brother, and Tali, a younger sister who was killed in a Hamas suicide bombing at the age of 16. Her mother, Rivka, is infrequently mentioned throughout the series; she is referred to as having taught Ziva how to drive and preferring that she play with dolls instead of "boy games" like Battleship and G.I. Joe. By 1991, Rivka took her children and left Eli because she could no longer tolerate the nature of his work. They apparently attempted to reconcile at some point, though, according to Ziva, they divorced when she was 13 due to Eli's indiscretions with a female Mossad operative. In the Season 9 episode "Safe Harbor", it is confirmed that she is deceased, having been "killed" prior to the beginning of the series.As a child, Ziva took ballet, though her father never came to any of her performances. At some point, he also taught her how to play baseball. Since her early childhood, Eli trained her in combat tactics and espionage. She commented in "Tribes" that her childhood best friend, a Muslim, was killed in a retaliatory Israeli air-strike when she was twelve. She explains her upbringing to Tony: "You and I come from two totally different places. In my world, you grow up fast. You have no choice."
Directly after high school, Ziva was in the Israeli army for two years as is compulsory for all Israeli women. Contrary to speculation, she claims she volunteered to join Mossad as soon as she was eligible, and was not motivated by the desire to avenge the death of her sister. During her time at Mossad, Ziva was part of a special operations unit known as Kidon, which is part of the Metsada. This unit specialized in assassinations, paramilitary operations, sabotage, and psychological warfare. Her position was control officer. As a result of early, intensive training, she is very skilled in hand-to-hand combat and shooting, later attempting to teach a class on knife throwing at NCIS.
Ziva is scripted as someone who "has had to do awful things and watch awful things in her life"; she has "seen 12-year-old suicide bombers in Israel" and gone hungry long enough to resort to eating maggots. In the third season, she recounts an incident in which one of her friends from Mossad had been beheaded after infiltrating a Hamas cell in Ramallah; Hamas terrorists sent his head back on the overnight express, leading her to view captivity as worse than death. Ducky later told Gibbs that, "Agent David has been through things you and I can't even imagine" and suggested that she was the only one who could relate to a suspect who had been abused.
Ziva has been involved in operations in Cairo, Egypt, in Iraq before its occupation, in Paris where she worked with partner Namir Eschel, and in Eastern Europe alongside Jenny Shepard, which was followed by six months in the United Kingdom on counter-terrorist operations directly prior to working with NCIS. According to Jenny, Ziva saved her life in Cairo two years prior to Ziva's first appearance in the series.
NCIS
Officer Ziva David first appears in the third season, having been sent to NCIS following the murder of Special Agent Todd by Ari Haswari. She is Ari's control officer and half-sister due to the fact that they shared the same father, Mossad's then Deputy Director, Eli David. Eli is later described as Director of Mossad.During the episode "Kill Ari ", NCIS Special Agent Gibbs finds himself cornered by an armed Ari, but Ziva emerges at the last minute and kills Ari with a single gunshot wound to the forehead, similarly to the way Ari had shot Agent Kate Todd in the season 2 finale, "Twilight". After Ari's death, she asks to be assigned as a liaison for Mossad at NCIS, where she subsequently joins Special Agent Gibbs' team in the episode "Silver War", permanently replacing the deceased Agent Todd.
Her early storylines center on her integration and attempts to be accepted by the other characters. Due to her relation to Ari, Ziva's appearance and eventual assignment to Gibbs' team draws fierce resentment from team member Anthony DiNozzo, forensic specialist Abby Sciuto, and even Gibbs himself when he learns that Director Shepard had assigned Ziva to his team without his knowledge. She later proves her worth in the same episode by using her training to save herself and Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard from Dr. Burns, a rogue member of the Smithsonian Anthropology Lab. This in turn causes the team to develop a newfound respect for her and sets the foundation for Ziva's strong friendship with Ducky.
In "Shalom", the fourth season premiere, she is framed by Iranian agents for the murder of two FBI officers and a suspect in their custody who was wanted for crimes against Israel. Accused of being a double agent, she becomes a fugitive and is forced to ask for help from Gibbs, who had retired from NCIS at the end of season 3 and is living in Mexico. They ultimately prove her innocence, which prompts Gibbs to return to NCIS.
According to one critic, "the first time we really see Ziva's soft side is during season 4", when she develops a short but intense friendship with Lt. Roy Sanders, who had been intentionally exposed to radiation by a coworker, in "Dead Man Walking". Ziva knew him from her daily run, during which they always passed by each other running in opposite directions. This elicits concern from Tony and others when it becomes clear that she is "falling in love with a dying man". Roy later asks if she would have noticed him if he had just stopped running, expressing regret that they had never been able to "run together". Ziva assures him that she will never forget him, and after his death, she is shown frequently wearing the orange beanie that Lt. Sanders wore when he went running.
In the fifth season finale, "Judgment Day ", Ziva's liaison position is terminated under the orders of newly appointed Director Leon Vance following the death of Director Shepard. "Last Man Standing", the sixth season premiere, picks up with her having resumed working as a Mossad field agent and undercover in Morocco. After Gibbs notices footage of an unconscious Ziva on the news following an explosion where she was working, it is soon revealed that Vance had deliberately sent Ziva back to Israel in order to help uncover a mole within NCIS itself. She returns to the team at the conclusion of the episode.
As the sixth season progressed, storylines shifted to Ziva's "sense of homelessness" and dual loyalty, climaxing at the end of the season as Tony fatally shoots her boyfriend, Michael Rivkin, and her apartment is bombed. Ziva, as a result, tells Gibbs that she cannot continue to work with Tony because she no longer trusts him, and Gibbs accepts this for the time being, saying that he will give her time to "remember who she can trust". Shortly after returning to Mossad full-time, she is sent on a mission to take down a terrorist in Somalia named Saleem Ulman. After one member of her team is killed and the other two injured, leaving her the only agent able to continue, she sends the remaining two back to Israel and opts to continue on to the terrorist camp alone. She is subsequently captured and held hostage for several months.
Believed to be dead in the first episode of season 7, "Truth or Consequences", Ziva is nonetheless found alive later in the episode, rescued by DiNozzo and McGee, with Gibbs killing her captor himself. Following her rescue, she resigns from Mossad and applies to become a full-fledged NCIS agent and an American citizen. Ziva receives mandatory psych evaluations and therapy but refuses to discuss with anyone what had happened to her in Saleem's camp. However, it is made clear that she suffered extensive abuse and torture and it is implied that she was raped as well while in captivity. Cote de Pablo briefly addressed this, confirming that, "Bad things happened to Ziva in Africa when she was captured."
In season 7, she becomes a probationary NCIS agent pending U.S. citizenship, becoming a United States citizen in the season finale after successfully passing her exams. Her probationary period officially ends in the season 9 premiere.
Midway through the tenth season, Ziva's estranged father, Eli, resurfaces in the episode "Shabbat Shalom" in the hope of healing their relationship. During his time in Washington, he is also secretly meeting with a Palestinian-born Iranian whom he knows from childhood. Together, they hope to initiate the beginning of a peace agreement between Israel and Iran. At the end of the episode, while having a Shabbat dinner at Director Vance's house, an unknown shooter opens fire on the house, killing Eli and fatally wounding Vance's wife, who dies in the hospital. The shooter evades capture and then kills himself with cyanide in a cigarette, when Gibbs and David corner him. Upon discovering her father's body, Ziva breaks down sobbing and praying in Hebrew. In the wake of Eli's death, the CIA kills the Iranian in an explosion, ending any chance of a peace arranged by the two.
The following week, "Shiva" drew 22.86 million viewers and became the most watched episode in the series. It focuses on the immediate aftermath of the killings and establishes Ziva's desire to seek revenge. Throughout the episode, both she and Vance attempt to participate in the investigation despite being prohibited due to their connections with the deceased. Eventually, it is revealed that Eli was killed by his protégé, Ilan Bodnar, who Ziva had known since they were children. Bodner found out about the secret discussions between his boss and the Iranian official, and believes that David's actions could seriously threaten Israel's security. After a failed attempt to kill Ziva, he escapes and disappears.
Ziva becomes fixated on revenge as the season continues and ultimately kills Bodnar, albeit in self-defense. Executive producer Gary Glasberg divulged that the plot was designed to draw out aspects of the character's personality that had been dormant for several years, saying, "People are going to see a Ziva David that they haven't seen in a long time. There is a strength and a resolute determination."