NCIS’ Mark Harmon Chided Co-Star For Being Ill, Cote De Pablo Reveals: ‘Don’t Take A Sick Day’

Cote de Pablo recalls how Mark Harmon chided her for not being on the NCIS set because she was sick. Introduced in NCIS season 3 as a replacement for Sasha Alexander’s Kate Todd, de Pablo’s Ziva immediately became a fan-favorite. She, Sean Murray’s Tim McGee, and Michael Weatherly are widely regarded as Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ best NCIS team. As the longest Major Case Response Team (MCRT) leader, Gibbs was known for his rules. As it turns out, Harmon also had them in real life, and one of them was about not missing work.

During Murray’s guest appearance on Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch podcast, de Pablo reveals that Harmon chided her once for not going to work despite being sick. In her story, she says that she was pulled aside by her co-star, who told her that even though she was ill, she still needed to show up so that they could decide how to handle the situation. Read the full quote below:

Don’t take a sick day, I learned that one. I was sick, in season 3, really, really sick, and I had Doctor Pat. You know famous doctor Pat? He was sent over, and he came over the house I had like a really awful fever and Doctor Pat said ‘You can’t go to work.’ So I thought ‘Well, if the doctor’s telling me that I can’t go to work, I must follow orders.’ So I made the grave mistake of staying home, and I was sent a car and I went to set and Mark came up to me, and he was kind enough, but he was very stern, and he said you come to set we decide when you’re sick something along the lines of that like.

But it was like ‘You come to set, and then we will determine how we address this.’ By the way, I don’t think I ever got sick again. But I think mentally, it just did a trick on you. And when you think about it, you know, anyone can do a job, better, worse, whatever. But no one can play McGee, no one can play DiNozzo. No one can play any of the characters. So you really had to be there, and that’s a lot of pressure.