Daniela Ruah is back on NCIS, not just as a director, but one of its stars! The actress makes her return to the franchise with a cameo appearance for the franchise's milestone 1000th episode.
The long-awaited episode airs tonight, Monday April 15, in which the 40-year-old star reprises her NCIS: Los Angeles role as Special Agent Kensi Blye, and makes her own kind of impact right after.
She also helmed the director's chair for the franchise's 1001st episode, the new episode of NCIS: Hawai'i which airs right after the milestone installment at 10 PM.
Daniela, who has directed past episodes of all three of the main NCIS versions (the flagship series, NCIS: Hawai'i, and NCIS: LA, which was canceled after 14 seasons last year), spoke with TVLine about the honor of returning to the show for its 1000th as well as the difficult episode she took on as a director.
Kensi makes her appearance in "1,000" via an MTAC video conference call, and Daniela explained that she was actually still in Hawai'i when she had to film the short scene.
"I actually filmed that while I was directing in Hawaii," she explained. "They were like, 'Can we fit this into your schedule?' and we were like, 'Well, we can't make it look like I'm in Hawaii.'"
"So, we had to go back and look at pictures of what Kensi's car looked like to try and get something as similar as possible, to look like Kensi is in her car." She gushed: "To be invited to be a part of the 1,000th episode was such an honor. It's too big of a deal."
SEE: NCIS star Daniela Ruah sparks major fan reaction with on-set photo amid return to franchise
As for her NCIS: Hawai'i directorial, titled "The Next Thousand," the episode which has already been branded 'crazy intense' covers a U.S. Army SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training exercise on the Big Island that goes haywire for all the wrong reasons.
"First of all, the fact that all three showrunners wrote it, Jan [Nash], Matt [Bosack] and Chris [Silber], that right there tells you that there's probably going to be, you know, a little more craziness, or it'll be more out-of-the-box," Daniela shared.
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She explained that a lot of the episode's emotional content also came from dissecting the tragic backstory for lead Jane Tennant, played by Vanessa Lachey.
"I cannot begin to tell you how incredible the entire cast was; specifically Vanessa, because she had all that digging within her to go into, and she was such a ball player."
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"She was like, 'Let's explore this together.' But everybody, they were all so game to try different things. And also, we went into a really dark place in terms of the case itself. The show has never dealt with [spoiler] before, and they really went there."
As for what she learned directing the episode, she said: "Every time I direct something, even if it was still on NCIS: LA, you're always learning new things. Here I'm working with a new crew, with a new director of photography, so everybody's going to teach you new things."
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