‘We’re Invoking Fight Club Rules’: NCIS Executive Producer Opens Up About The Secrecy That Went Into Bringing Back Cote De Pablo

At the beginning of NCIS Season 11, Cote de Pablo departed after eight seasons as a main cast member. However, that wasn’t the last we saw of her character, Ziva David, who became a beloved addition to the popular CBS procedural when she was brought in to replace the murdered Caitlin Todd. De Pablo made a surprise appearance in the final moments of the Season 16 finale, then appeared in several Season 17 episodes. Great steps were taken to ensure that the actress’ return was kept a tightly-guarded secret, which executive producer Mark Horowitz described as “invoking Fight Club rules.”

Horowitz stopped by Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch to talk with de Pablo and Tony DiNozzo actor Michael Weatherly, both of whom will be paired back together in the upcoming spinoff NCIS: Tony & Ziva. When the conversation turned to everything that went into planning de Pablo’s Season 16 cameo, the producer started off by saying

When you came back for your special episode… and we were all waiting for you. We were very good at keeping secrets. These surprises that happened in front of the audience were a surprise to many, many people who worked on the show that were that were not told about what we were going to do. There was a whole thing we did where that scene was never published. It only existed on one piece of paper, and we would literally show it to the dozen people that had to be involved, and that was it. It was never, never released to agents or anyone. The dailies were all kept separate. Everything was separate. This happened when Kate was shot on the rooftop, that’s where it started. And we came up with what I called Fight Club Rules. ‘We’re invoking Fight Club rules, we’re just not going to talk about it. And I mean you’re not going to talk to your wife, your husband, your kids, your friends at the bar, nobody.’ And we were able to pull this off.