Michael Weatherly says Tony DiNozzo has changed without disappearing. The 58-year-old actor said he wants viewers of Tony & Ziva to recognize the character they know while seeing how fatherhood and time have reshaped him, and he will return to NCIS for Season 24 next fall.
Weatherly’s Season 24 return lands after Tony & Ziva was released on DVD on Tuesday, putting the spin-off back in circulation as the franchise lines up its next move. For viewers tracking the character across years, the update ties the new series to the old one instead of treating Tony DiNozzo as a clean reset.
New York Comic Con remarks
“The fan expectation is really where it all came from and where it originated,” Weatherly said at New York Comic Con, where he also framed the challenge of returning to a role he had already carried for years. “I was really curious. How do you come back and explore that guy and bring in and integrate all these things that happened off camera?”
He said that is why the goal is familiar but not static. “Where do we meet him? What's he like? So, I'm hoping that fans of the old show recognize the character that they knew and loved. But, also, can see that he's evolved. And if you've never seen the show before, you're like, 'Why does he cry so much?'”
Tony in Tony & Ziva
Tony & Ziva follows former NCIS agents Tony and Ziva as their quiet retirement and co-parenting of their teen daughter Tali are interrupted by an international crisis. Weatherly, who is credited as a producer as well as the star of Tony & Ziva, said Tony now shows softer sides because the story puts him in a parenting role instead of only an investigator’s chair.
“All of those feelings were there,” he said, but Tony hid them behind reflexes built over time. “He just had so many defense mechanisms covering them, the jokes and the movie references and the 'making someone else uncomfortable, if you're uncomfortable.' I'll win by making you uncomfortable, because then I blow it up and you can't attack me now because I blew us all up.”
Gibbs and the father gap
Weatherly said Tony’s shift did not happen in a vacuum. “He didn't even know he was doing it and I think that he learned a lot from Tali and the patience it took to become a father and put himself second and realize that, as good as an investigator as he was, and as much as he had learned from Gibbs (Mark Harmon), Gibbs is a very damaged father figure, and wasn't really great at teaching him love.”
He added that Gibbs could teach procedure, but not the rest of life. “He's great at teaching you how to solve a crime and be lonely and eat steak with a knife, but he wasn't great at integrating all these other aspects.” That is the useful clue in Weatherly’s update: Tony is still Tony, but the armor is thinner because the role now has to carry parenthood, not just banter.
Season 24 next fall
Weatherly said returning to Tony DiNozzo feels like entering a risky underground space, comparing it to being deep underground in a mine. The image fits the job ahead: the character has to read as familiar to long-time viewers while still making room for the changes Weatherly says came from life off camera.
“It doesn't really change how much I care,” he said about being both producer and star, and that is the practical takeaway for NCIS viewers. The franchise is not just bringing Weatherly back for a cameo; it is asking Season 24 to absorb the Tony DiNozzo that Tony & Ziva has already reshaped.
