After Cote de Pablo left NCIS early into Season 11, Emily Wickersham was brought in as Ziva David’s replacement, Ellie Bishop, an NSA analyst who quickly joined the Naval Criminal Investigative Service after meeting Mark Harmon’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs and became part of his team. Like her predecessor, Wickersham stuck around the popular CBS series for eight seasons, departing in the Season 18 finale, titled “Rule 91”. Three years year, Wickersham opened up about how much of an adjustment it was for her leaving NCIS, a period of her life she described as “wonderful and weird.”
Wickersham took some time to chat with the hosts of Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch, the aforementioned Cote de Pablo and fellow NCIS alum Michael Weatherly, who are currently in the middle of shooting their upcoming spinoff series, NCIS: Tony & Ziva. During the interview on the podcast, de Pablo asked Wickersham asked how long it took until it finally sunk in for her that she wouldn’t have to go back to the NCIS set, and she answered:
It took a while. I left the show, I found out I was pregnant a month later… So it was a combo of decompressing and trying to really relax and figure out how things were going to be without work. Because as you guys know, it's all consuming. Your life is all NCIS when you're on that show. It’s all day, every day, and you're not really left with much time to do many things outside of that. So that was a real adjustment for me.
Since NCIS is a TV show that typically has seasons comprised of 20-24 episodes, Emily Wickersham is right that acting on the series takes up a lot of your time with those long shooting hours. So it’s understandable it took some time for the actress to get used to NCIS not being part of her everyday life, and along with the discovery of the pregnancy soon after, she also found herself moving to the other side of the United States. The actress continued:
It was wild to go into pregnancy, and then I moved to New York really shortly after because my boyfriend lives here. It was a weird moment in time. It was wonderful and weird. As you both know, it's strange to leave something that has been ingrained in you for so many years.
Again, Emily Wickersham was on NCIS for eight seasons, an amount a lot of TV shows never reach. So she had a good run as Ellie Bishop, but after nearly a decade of being a main cast member on one of the most popular procedurals ever, she’d reached a point she was ready to close this chapter of the proverbial book. When Cote de Pablo asked Wickersham inquired about this and pointed out how it was “epic” that she left NCIS and had a baby within the span of just 10 months, Wickersham said:
It was, for sure. I don't know if I was necessarily ready, but it, it happened and it was amazing. I was ready to leave the show. It was time and I was ready to move on to something else, and I guess this was the something else I was meant to move on to. So it was good.
NCIS remains the last thing Emily Wickersham has acted in, but with the show going into its 22nd season this fall on the 2024 TV schedule, and the possibility of it continuing its impressive run into Season 23 and beyond, perhaps there will come a day when she’s ready to reprise Ellie Bishop, whether it’s for a guest spot or recurring stint. After all, Cote de Pablo eventually returned for the Season 16 finale and a handful of Season 17 episodes.
When we last saw Bishop, she was departing for an undercover mission that required her to tarnish her reputation as an NCIS agent. It would be great for either that assignment to finally finish or for Bishop to retire from operating as this kind of agent, even if she doesn’t want to return to NCIS either. Regardless, Bishop could come back to Washington D.C. and reunite with Wilder Valderrama’s Nick Torres and the rest of her work family.
For now, you can revisit Emily Wickersham’s time on NCIS by streaming those episodes with a Paramount+ subscription. Season 22 premieres Monday, October 14, and the new prequel NCIS: Origins will follow immediately afterwards.
