Why ‘NCIS: LA’ Star Daniela Ruah Is ‘Thrilled’ About ‘New Beginnings’
NCIS: Los Angeles ended its 14-year run with a series finale, titled “New Beginnings,” that delivered happiness and left quite a bit up in the air about the future.
For Kensi Blye (Daniela Ruah) and Marty Deeks (Eric Christian Olsen), whose journey to parenthood hasn’t been easy (remember back when the top of kids first came up?), she found out she’s pregnant just before Callen (Chris O’Donnell) and Anna’s (Bar Paly) wedding.Here, Ruah opens up about Kensi’s ending and more.
After how tough the journey to parenthood has been for Kensi and Deeks, it was so great to see them so happy this past year, with Rosa (Natalia Del Riego), now the pregnancy… When did you a this was going to be part of Kensi’s ending?
Daniela Ruah: I had heard some rumors that that is what they were thinking about adding for Kensi at the end, and honestly, I was very thrilled, and I think the way that it was done in the episode was kind of brilliant, too. It’s what happens in so many infertility journeys, fortunately, where people just end up giving up because they’ve gone through what they had to go through and it didn’t work out and the minute they don’t think about it anymore, it happens naturally for them. I love that that was a part of their journey. I think Kensi and Deeks really deserved for that to happen for them.
I love that now what was a family of three will eventually be a family of four. And they obviously don’t love Rosa any less. They’re just happy to have a bigger family that I think they both never had and always wished they had.I like that they told Rosa by telling her she’s going to be a big sister.Right? She comes in, and she’s like, “Why is everybody crying?”
I only represented that journey of infertility on the show. I didn’t live through it in real life, but I know the joy that it is to add to your family because I have two children myself. And so yeah, it was just such a genuinely happy moment for us in the room. And it was just a sense of — how can I explain it? We were all very emotional about it being the last episode anyway. So when you add in that sense of joy, I’m trying to explain this on an emotional level, and it’s difficult because it still feels so big for me, that that was the way their journey ended or began really, right? It’s left as an open-ended, it’s new beginnings. The end of the show is new beginnings, and I just loved it.
I’m just so thrilled and happy that that’s how it was. When I had my own kids, we had chosen to hide those pregnancies because it didn’t make sense at that time for Kensi to be pregnant in the story arc of those characters.[That] made sense to me at the time, too. I remember the debate was always like, we have two federal agents who work in dangerous jobs, potentially life-threatening jobs. How do you deal with that when you bring a child into the world? Is Kensi just going to stop working? Is that what we want to say that women should do? Should Deeks stay home? Do we want to transmit that a parent should stay home and leave their job just because it’s a dangerous job when you have tons and thousands of families out there who have two parents who are either in law enforcement or both of them are in the military?
We never wanted to be a commentary on how it should be. Because everything is different for each family and it works differently for each family, and we would never want to be dictating how other people should be making their choices who live similar lives as these characters. So it was always like, there’s no right way to do this. And so we kept the infertility journey, which I think was super important to represent on the show because there really are millions of women and men and families, couples in general, around the world who go through that. And so it was a way to also not have to make the decision of what happens for them. I remember always saying, wouldn’t it be nice if on the last episode they found out they were pregnant? Because then you don’t have to show how they do it, but they get the joy of having the baby.