Although NCIS spun out of the legal drama JAG in 2003, it was able to start launching its own franchise (which has now surpassed 1,000 episodes) six years later thanks to the backdoor pilot episodes for NCIS: Los Angeles. “The two-part “Legend” introduced viewers to characters like Chris O’Donnell’s G. Caleb, LL Cool J’s Sam Hanna and Daniela Ruah’s Kensi Blye. What’s interesting about Ruah, however, is that she bombed her audition to play Kensi, but showrunner Shane Brennan had a good reason for casting her in the role anyway.
Ruah discussed her NCIS: Los Angeles history while appearing on Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch to chat with hosts Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo, who are soon returning to this universe to lead the Paramount+-exclusive spinoff NCIS: Tony & Ziva. While opening up about how she formed Kensi as a character when Los Angeles began, she started off by saying that her first audition for the show went quite poorly:
I really botched my first audition, no joke. And it’s like, ‘Well, you got the part.’ Yeah, but I almost didn’t. So my first audition, I was still living in New York, and I had a ginormous speech, which I did, and then I screwed up towards the end. And the casting director was really nice, and she’s like, ‘Try again.’ But then I got nervous, and so I kept screwing up this speech earlier, earlier in this speech, and she’s like, ‘You know what? We’ll cut it together.’ And I was like, ‘Ok, thank you.’ And it was an action sequence, so the room was small, it was really weird, the whole thing was very bizarre. And I walked out, and I literally, unemotionally ripped up the side and I was like, ‘Well, that was a freaking doozy.’ Like, that didn’t work out. And it was pilot season, so I was auditioning for a bunch of stuff at the same time. You’re just like, ’It’s just one more, right?’ The funny thing too, I was like, ‘CBS has Criminal Minds, the CSIs and NCIS, there’s no way they’re going to pick up another procedural. Like, there’s no way.’ Little did I know.
At this point in her career, Daniela Ruah had acted in various Portuguese film and TV productions, but she was looking to score her big break on the American TV front. While it’s a shame her first attempt at trying out for Kensi Blye, it’s a good thing that casting director was looking over for her. Not only did the footage of her get cut together effectively, but she caught a break thanks to the size of the video that was sent to Shane Brennan. Ruah continued:
Anyway, so I walked out of there really, really genuinely thinking like, ‘Ok, that was it, onto the next.’ I had had other auditions that day that I was like, ‘Nailed it!’ Never even got a callback. I got a callback, to my complete surprise. They flew me out to LA because that callback was already the studio audition and all that stuff. In that one, I did do well and I felt good. It went well, obviously got the part. But when we were shooting the pilots with you guys, I remember asking Shane Brennan, who was the creator of our show, and I was like, ‘How did I make it past that first audition? And he was like, ‘You kind of got lucky because they sent it to me on a very, very small video that I couldn’t really see very well, but you just had this international energy and vibe, which is what we wanted for the character, and so we gave you another shot.
I wonder what would have happened if Daniela Ruah’s audition video had been normal-sized. Would Shane Brennan and his casting team still have selected her because of that “international energy and vibe,” or would they have selected someone else? Fortunately for NCIS: Los Angeles fans, that didn’t happen, and she played Kensi Blye for all of the show’s 13 seasons, plus a guest appearance in Hawaii 5-0. The spinoff allowed her to start flexing her directorial muscles, as she directed six Los Angeles episodes in its final seasons, then helmed an episode each of NCIS and the recently-cancelled NCIS: Hawai’i.