‘NCIS’ season 11: Cote de Pablo will leave, but still appear this fall

As we suspected earlier, we did not think that Cote de Pablo would completely depart “NCIS” this year before at least making some sort of appearance. Why? It’d be far too heartless for all parties involved to not give any closure to the story of her Ziva character after so much time invested on the show.

However, the story we have here to share is still upsetting in itself: The actress is going to leave the show, albeit after making at least one appearance early on. In a statement, CBS had the following to say about her decision to leave the show:

“We respect Cote’s decision, thank her for being an important part of the NCIS team, and for eight terrific years playing Ziva David. Cote and CBS share a great respect for the NCIS audience, and we look forward to working with her and the producers on appropriate closure in this chapter of Ziva’s story.”

This decision to leave very early on in the show does surprise us, given that we thought the smallest presence she would have is as a recurring player in the first few episodes. The writing process has been going on for long, and what we can figure is that Cote informed the team months ago of her intentions, and it then became all about trying to figure out when and where to write her off. The fact that a deal was not announced early on was nerve-wrecking, but regardless of if she was leaving or staying, this was a very weird decision for CBS to announce this late into the summer.

For “NCIS” fans, this has to be a giant bummer given that it serves as some proof that had producers really wanted to get Tony and Ziva together, they should have waited a little less time than eight years. This is a long time to keep anyone on a show, and you do have to eventually want to move on to other things.

What’s your immediate reaction to this news? If you want to read some other updates when it comes to “NCIS,” you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: CBS