Things You Don’t Know About Cote De Pablo

If you’re a fan of NCIS, you’re probably familiar with the character Ziva David, a Mossad liaison officer from Israel who spoke more than five languages. But what about the actress who played this beloved character? Let’s just say, Cote de Pablo has her own impressive resume. She has previously described herself as an old-soul, Latina hippie who loves hanging out with her mom. With a description like that, who wouldn’t want to get to know the woman behind this character?
Her real name isn’t Cote

Cote de Pablo
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Cote de Pablo’s real name is actually Maria Jose de Pablo Fernandez. According to Latinos Post, when de Pablo and her family moved from Chile to Miami, Florida, many of the kids at her school couldn’t pronounce her name. She changed it to “Cote,” which de Pablo said is a common nickname in Chile.

She was a star runner as a child

Cote de Pablo

When de Pablo moved to America from Chile at 10 years old, she did not know much English. Learning a whole new language at a young age would be very hard to experience, but de Pablo had one teacher who helped her find her path. She described this on The Late Show with David Letterman (via YouTube), saying, “And so I remember in 5th grade, I had a teacher… who was wonderful and he was an older man. And the only thing I knew really was ‘run.’ I knew what that meant. And so he put me into the track and field, and so he got me starting to run and all that stuff, and before I knew it, I was a little track and field star. And I remember, he would say in the middle of a competition, he would scream and get very red and scream, ‘Cote, run!’ And that’s all I knew.”
She didn’t always want to be an actress

Cote de Pablo

Now it’s hard to picture de Pablo in any other field aside from acting, but she had her heart set on a different life when she was younger. As she shared with TV Guide, as shared by a fan Facebook page, “I, believe it or not, wanted to be a secretary, much like Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Secretary. … I had clips all over and markers, and you know, the old-fashioned typewriters… I like to follow direction… and, by the way, I became an actor, so I’m kind of doing it anyway.”

Performing arts became her home
Cote de Pablo

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And it wasn’t just the name that de Pablo had to overcome as she adjusted to a new country. She told Prevention that she didn’t start learning English until she moved to Miami. The persistent de Pablo worked hard to learn English, and eventually found her place when she went to a performing arts high school. She described that experience saying, “I had always been interested in the arts, but performing became even more important because it was a way to communicate with people in my new country…My friend had the perfect saying for it: ‘You found your tribe.’ We’re not Chilean or Argentinean or Brazilian or Russian. We’re actors.

She gave up Broadway
Cote de Pablo
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Not only did de Pablo go to a performing arts high school, but studied musical theater at Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating, she continued on the theater path, appearing on the New York City Public Theater stage for a Shakespeare production. De Pablo was working in San Francisco when the opportunity to audition for NCIS came up. In an interview for Front Row Features, she said, “I was about to do Broadway (The Mambo Kings) right before I got NCIS…so I went from my chance of doing a Broadway show into doing the series.” Her risk obviously paid off, but de Pablo wants to get back on the stage eventually. Describing her chance on Broadway, she said, “It’s something still pending that I want to do.”
She was terrified of guns
Cote de Pablo
YouTube

Though she played a former Israeli special forces veteran on NCIS, de Pablo couldn’t be further from that tough-as-nails persona in real life. In fact, she revealed during an interview on Good Morning America that not only had she never fired a gun before suiting up for the military police procedural, but she was also terrified of them.

When asked whether she was nervous to handle a hand cannon, de Pablo said, “That’s an understatement. The first day I ever went to the shooting range I was there with Leon [Carroll Jr. – the former Marine and technical advisor for the show] and a couple of men, very nice men, and they gave me the gun, and they said, ‘You’re gonna hold the gun, and blah, blah blah,’ and I thought, ‘Oh God… be very strong,’ because you don’t want to show them that you’re weak. So I held that gun, and I remember holding the gun and just trembling.”
She wasn’t exactly thrilled with her NCIS exit
Mark Harmon and Cote de Pablo
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According to a statement by NCIS executive producer Gary Glasberg, de Pablo’s decision to leave NCIS was entirely her own, and it was one that took the production crew by surprise. But speaking with Yahoo TV, de Pablo said that she “wanted to stay for more episodes, but had no choice in that matter.” She also told TVLine that she felt her character’s exit was “rushed,” and that she “would have liked a little bit of closure.”

Granted, that all must be placed in the proper context, which is that there seems to be absolutely no bad blood between de Pablo and the show, as she also said that she has “no second thoughts” about the way she left. She even feels like the door may be open for her to someday return, having hinted, “I think the fact that they never killed the character off is very telling.”