How Many Languages Can NCIS Star Cote De Pablo Speak?

Cote de Pablo is an actor most famous for her role as Ziva David on "NCIS." The Chile native starred on the crime drama series from Season 3 to Season 10 before leaving the show under vague circumstances. According to an interview she gave with TV Guide in 2013, her decision to quit "NCIS" was due to personal reasons, which she didn't care to explain further. "The idea of leaving was ... an overwhelmingly hard thing—at times terrifying," she said.

A few years later, de Pablo hinted at the real reason during a Q&A, stating that she didn't like the direction in which the writers wanted to take her character. "I perceived that the character was not being treated with the respect that she deserved ... They were going to send her back to Israel and make her an unfortunate, miserable woman," she claimed.

Regardless of why de Pablo originally left, fans loved her character during the years she spent on the show, and were thrilled to learn she was going to be written back into the series for the current 17th season. During an interview with Entertainment Tonight, de Pablo stated that she "got really excited about the idea" of starring as Ziva again and felt that she was "slipping into those comfortable shoes right back with the family." One of the consequences of slipping back into Ziva's shoes means de Pablo will have to once again become a polyglot. But how many languages does she speak?

Cote de Pablo is Chilean-American and her native languages are English and Spanish. However, her bilingualism is nothing compared to the number of languages her character, Ziva David, speaks on "NCIS." And since Ziva is fluent in an additional eight languages — Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, French, Pashto, German, Italian, and Russian — this means that de Pablo has also needed to learn at least some of the languages to successfully pull off the role.

In an interview with CBS' "This Morning," de Pablo revealed the road to becoming Ziva was not as straightforward as she originally thought. For starters, she believed she would be playing a character of European descent and had no idea that she had auditioned to play the part of an Israeli Mossad agent. 

In a separate interview with Prevention, the actor expressed her shock when she discovered she would have to learn enough Hebrew to pull off a monologue for her character in just 48 hours. She referred to the experience as "terrifying" but one to learn from. She told the publication, "I used to look down on people who were, for example, playing a Latin role, because I could tell that they didn't speak Spanish ... Then I realized, 'Oh, God, I'm in that place right now.'" While de Pablo wasn't pleased with her Hebrew skills after only two days of practice, her fans couldn't tell that she hadn't been speaking the language her whole life.

While Cote de Pablo's native languages are Spanish and English, she did not learn them both at the same time. In fact, Spanish is her true native language, while English came a bit later after her family moved from Chile to the United States when she was 10, as per Prevention. Adapting to a new country and culture was hard enough, but not speaking the language was even harder. Understandably, the "NCIS" star told the publication that she "missed [her] country and [her] friends terribly." 

The struggles that de Pablo faced when she moved to the U.S. ironically led her into the world of acting and performing. According to Prevention, de Pablo found her "niche" when she attended a performing arts high school "because it was a way to communicate with people." A friend of hers referred to the experience as de Pablo finding her "tribe," which the actor feels is the "perfect saying," telling the publication, "We're not Chilean or Argentinean or Brazilian or Russian. We're actors."

In addition to acting, de Pablo used running as a way to cope with her new life. During an appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman," the actor said that "run" was one of the first words she understood in her limited English and that after she decided to give track and field a try, she became a "star." It seems like this actor has an array of talents up her sleeve!