‘NCIS’ Boss Talks Tony’s Return, the New Director & More

NCIS goes big for its 24th season premiere. Not only does the long-running CBS drama welcome Michael Weatherly back as (a changed, more mature) Tony DiNozzo, but it also reveals who was shot in that standoff between Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) and McGee’s (Sean Murray) son Mateo (Patrick Keleher) and gives the agency a new permanent director following Vance’s (Rocky Carroll) death. TV Insider spoke with showrunner Steven D. Binder about that and more. Warning: Spoilers for the NCIS Season 24 premiere ahead!

It turns out that Mateo shot Tony in the arm after chatter on the dark web (thanks, Boris from NCIS: Tony & Ziva!) led the former agent to him. (Mateo got caught up in trouble after he turned to the wrong people to forge documents when his mom went missing last season.) LaRoche (Seamus Dever), the new director, refuses to let McGee, Torres, or Tony work the case. That doesn’t stop them — and when it all leads to SecNav’s daughter being kidnapped and it’s the team, specifically Tony, who brings her home, well, LaRoche is out a job, the team doesn’t have to worry about their jobs, and there’s a new director: Tony!

SecNav reveals that she’d asked him before and he’d turned it down, due to “complicated” timing. But now that he’s helicopter parenting in D.C. with Tali in boarding school in Boston and Ziva (Cote de Pablo) working near her at a language institute, she doesn’t see any reason for him to say no again. Also, she already talked to Ziva, who wanted him to take the job the first time he was offered it. He also has zero time to decide: The press release already went out.

Below, showrunner Steven D. Binder breaks down the premiere and reveals what’s next for Director Tony DiNozzo and everyone else.

Tony’s the new director. Was that always the plan once you knew you’d be bringing him back? When did you start thinking that was the route that you were going to go post Vance? Because SecNav had asked him before, you put that into the episode.

Steven D. Binder: Right. There were reasons for doing that. You try not to get too excited about things creatively until you know they’re going to happen for sure. And I think once we knew for sure that Michael Weatherly was coming back to the show, we started looking at, OK, well, what’s the what? We didn’t quite know exactly. You always have a plan, but then you always change the plan. So we hadn’t landed on who specifically was going to be shot, what was going to happen in that confrontation. And then once we knew it was a lock with Michael Weatherly, I was like, “Well, what if Michael Weatherly gets shot?”

Robert Voets/CBS

And by the same token, what role could he come to the show with? The 500th episode that exited Leon Vance — these were two completely independent things, but suddenly, we had a huge opening at NCIS and now you’re thinking, well, what can we do with Michael Weatherly? And you’re like, “Well, we have a huge opening, does that make sense, just right out the gate?” And then as we thought about it. “What can he really do?” We don’t want him back in the bullpen being a regular agent. First of all, there’s not enough chairs. And do we create a second team for him? There’s not enough chairs again. And Gary Cole‘s fantastic as a team leader, so what do we really do with this character? And it just seemed like the kid who pulls the fire alarm in high school and you come back and he’s the principal, that just seemed like the right move for that character. We get to showcase his maturity and yet he also still gets to be quintessentially Tony DiNozzo. That just seemed like a great internal conflict for him to be the director and then really fun for the audience to watch as well.

Also NCIS had brought up the possibility of him leading his own team, so you’ve already touched on that years ago.

Yes.

With Tony being the new director, is this a position that could stretch into multiple seasons? We saw how long Rocky was around for as director. Does this mean that Michael’s not just back for this season, but potentially more?

I mean, we take these things one season at a time. On the other hand, you blink and it’s Season 24. So I don’t really know. Network television is a real hand-to-mouth endeavor in terms of getting these scripts on time. We’re doing 20 episodes in a season. So we’re taking it one step at a time. Certainly it’s been really great having him in that chair, and I don’t see any reason why it should slow, but I don’t know that we’re looking quite that far yet. We’re shooting Episode 7 and thinking about Episode 13. You talk about Season 25, I’m going to need a pacemaker, we keep talking about that.

You talked about how we’ll see how Tony has changed. And when we spoke about the finale, you talked about the storytelling and how you were going to go about figuring out the next director. With Michael in the role though, that changes things obviously, but it also means you can do different things with the dynamics among the team because he used to be one of them. He worked with McGee, he worked with Palmer (Brian Dietzen). He doesn’t know the others. He needs to get to know them. So what does that mean for what we’re going to see for those dynamics now that he is their boss?

I’m glad you asked that because that’s really where the fun is. You saw a little bit of that in Episode 1, but there wasn’t really a lot of time. Plus he wasn’t in the building. In Episode 2, he’s going to be in the building now, he’s going to be the director. And one of the things, the nut to crack about this, is what is his relationship with all these other characters because this has always been a relationship show, and we cover the gamut. Parker and Tony, we are thinking of them as two people on a first date, getting to know each other, laughing at each other’s jokes, getting a little awkward maybe. I won’t tell you exactly why yet you’ll see it, but Knight [Katrina Law] sort of adopts a mother hen role towards Tony, making sure that he’s sticking to his diet and things like that.

Obviously Jimmy Palmer and Tony have known each other for a while, but we redefine their dynamic in a really fun way and you’ll see that in number two.

And then the big one is McGee and Tony because their relationship initially was probie and frat boy who was hazing him. They’re both a lot older now. They’re both parents. They’re going to relate to each other on a much different level. And if you zoom out, the premiere really is about being a parent. McGee’s new to having a son. The whole episode is about what happens with his relationship with his son. Tali’s not in the show, but [Tony’s] helicopter parenting. And then the main A story is SecNav’s a mother whose child has been taken. And I think that’s really what this show is about, the McGee Tony dynamic, being parents together.

It kind of feels like they might have to find their footing again? Because at the beginning of the premiere, they bring up the things that they didn’t tell each other about — Tony didn’t know about Mateo and it had been some time, and McGee didn’t know Tony was back in D.C.

Yeah. You could go either way with that. I think the way we went was not necessarily that they’ve lost touch and need to find their footing. They’re old friends who cannot talk for four years and then talk for five hours and it’s like yesterday. …. Dramatically, it helped us with some things. We didn’t want certain people knowing certain things. But the idea of, a year can go by and you don’t talk or Tony was on the run and he could have called McGee and said, “McGee, I need you,” but McGee wasn’t in that show. So he just went about his own thing and maybe did his friend McGee a favor and didn’t call him and [bring] him [into] this. And then life happens and you’re not always there for all of it.

Greg Gayne/CBS

Speaking of being a parent, because as McGee points out, Mateo didn’t trust him and they have stuff to work on. And yes, the murder charge was dropped, but does that mean that there isn’t a concern for legal consequences for Mateo? What’s going on there and what are we going to see from McGee and Mateo’s dynamic as a result?

We will pick that storyline up. There are consequences for Mateo. I think they will be — resolved isn’t the right word, but I think the result of those legal consequences will be a launching point for another very interesting dynamic for McGee. And I don’t want to ruin it for you, but it’s just really great. It’s one of those things that you don’t expect, and then once it happens, you’re like, “Oh no, that’s perfect for this show.”

Is this the end of LaRoche?

LaRoche isn’t a bad guy. He’s not evil, at least not yet. He just doesn’t listen, but he’s certainly a very interesting character. He’s a fantastic actor. So, it’s the end of LaRoche for now. His entry has always been about power, seeking power, and he finally gets it, he’s the director of NCIS. And once that gets taken away and that musical’s over, that’s the curtain call. It doesn’t mean there’s not a sequel for this character, but this is the run of his arc for sure for now.

What can you say about seeing Cote again? And are Torres and Ziva in touch? Because there was a line that Torres had, and I was trying to figure out, did Tony tell him or maybe did Ziva tell him?

I would imagine Tony and Torres had time to talk, but also Ziva’s got McGee’s [number]. It’s not hard to get these people’s contact info, so I assume that they’re all in touch when they need to be. Ziva will be a presence in the show just because she shares a child with the director of NCIS. So even if we don’t necessarily see her, we will hear about her and we’ll feel her for sure. But that’s kind of where we’re leaving it for now.

So they aren’t plans right now that she’s going to pop up in DC at the moment?

No, no plans as of yet.

Are there any other returning characters coming? I mean, once you bring back Michael Weatherly, it’s kind of like, “Who’s next?”

Yeah, I’m trying to think of anyone. Barbara from accounting.

She’s so fun.

She’s fun. We’re going to find out some things. She’s been there for a while. Toni’s been there for a while, so there could be a history there that we don’t know about that. We’ll have some fun with that. No other long time… A lot of them we killed, unfortunately. There’s not a lot alive, but no plans right now.

What we’re trying to do is… Well, we love the old time, old school actors for sure. But one of the things we’ve been trying to do for the last couple seasons, and we really are doing it this season, is to find the next crop of people, the next characters. And you never know, it’s so dependent upon the actor and the chemistry that the actor has. We could create five characters who the character has potential to be long-running, but it just doesn’t pop in the way that I think our fans would come to expect from the level of popping that we do with these people. So this season, we’re just really bringing in a lot of people. Every episode, our casting people always will ask, “Any chance for a recur?” I’m like, “This character could totally recur.” We’re bringing in a lot of fresh faces and hopefully some of them will stick. And then in Season 32, you’ll ask me this question again, and the fan favorites that we’re bringing in are the ones we introduced in Season 24. That’s the hope.

Related

Will Tony & Gibbs Reunite on 'NCIS'? Michael Weatherly Teases Crossover Potential

You know I have to ask about crossovers because New York is launching, and then of course you have Origins and you have Mark Harmon on there. And you also have him going into the NCIS office over on Origins. So what can you say?

Oh my God, I could say it’s such a logistical nightmare to shoot and share actors who live in other states. Just saying the word scares me. I’m just guessing, New York‘s a new show, I think they’re starting from zero. There’s no sets, there’s nothing. So I think they’re going to get it to speed. No one has pushed or broached that subject yet, and the show hasn’t even aired. But if you look back over the history of NCIS, there has always been crossovers. I think anyone would be reasonable to assume at some point there will be a request for one and we’ll get it done. Sharing actors is a little easier. Crossovers are very complicated to shoot.

So possibility of seeing Mark Harmon’s Gibbs interacting with any of the NCIS people?

Well, that one’s above my pay grade, so I wouldn’t know that. I just meant general concepts between the shows.

You brought up new characters, possibility of recurring. Are there any we’ll be meeting you can talk about that are going to be recurring?

Yeah, we are going to meet some people who could be some bad guys. Mike Franks [Muse Watson], everybody loved Mike Franks, Gibbs’s mentor. We’re going to be meeting a character like that who means something to one of our people in that way. And those types of characters are always very dynamic and interesting and they cross lines and we know it’s wrong, but also part of us likes it. We’re going to have a character like that.

Is that Mike O’Malley‘s character for Torres?

Yes, that was Mike O’Malley who was great. He’s great, and it was great.

Is there an overarching big bad guy for the season or anything like that?

Yeah, I would say to you, keep an eye on Episode 2. We are going to introduce something in there that will set the stage for something happening, and it will be large enough that it’ll be a director level event as well. It won’t just be — in the past, we’ve had the Port-to-Port Killer [Kerr Smith‘s Jonas Cobb], and it was just a serial killer we were chasing. This will be a little bigger, stakes are going to be a little higher, and that will be clear what that is by Episode 2.

NCIS, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS