NCIS: Los Angeles‘ Kensi Blye has got moves, as we’ve seen in any number of action and fight sequences over the years. But this Sunday (CBS, 8/7c), viewers will lay witness a whole new side to the Special Agent, as she goes undercover as a salsa dancer.

TVLine invited Daniela Ruah to share how the storyline came to be (including the “baby bump” it hit along the way), reveal what smooth move of his own Deeks may have to show off and take us behind-the-scenes of Kensi’s holiday “brawl” with Anna Kolcheck.

TVLINE | What sets the stage for this dance episode?
I asked myself the same question, when our writers told me there would be a dance episode — “Howwww are we going to make NCIS agents dance? What’s the purpose?” Basically, there’s a guy who works at this Cuban club and he is upset that his wife is selling government secrets to foreign agencies. He’s also very bitter because she’s divorcing him, so he decides to pin this on her, which brings us to the club he works at, because we have to investigate both sides of it. I end up going undercover as a salsa dancer.

TVLINE | What is Kensi’s reaction to the assignment?
I think she’s actually pretty excited. She dances with her girlfriends on weekends, which is what she tells the guy shes auditioning for — and he’s very arrogant with her, like, “I don’t have the time for this.” But she’s like, “Just give me a chance,” and he does, and he likes what he sees. That allows her to infiltrate and spy on the place a bit.

TVLINE | How much of a heads up did you the actress get?
I got a lot of heads up and I’ll tell you why: Late last season, [consulting producer] Joe Sachs — a very adventurous writer who wrote the episode where Kensi and Deeks wind up in the house with the giant Tesla coil that they have to deactivate — told me, “There’s this episode where I want you to dance salsa.” I was so excited, but when he told me this I had just found out that I was pregnant with Sierra [who was born in September]. I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, this is never going to work because I’m going to be super-pregnant.” It was too early to tell anybody at that point, so I smiled and said I was looking forward to it, then I ended up telling Joe I was pregnant. And he was so sweet, and so were the producers — they ended up pushing it to the end of this season, when they knew I would be able to dance again.

The guy that I dance with, George Akram, he’s a Broadway performer who a few months before we shot the episode had come off of playing Bernardo in the West Side Story revival, so he’s a triple threat kind of performer! It made me feel very comfortable that I was dancing with somebody who actually knew what they were doing. I have a tendency to take the lead on things, so I was happy I didn’t have to.

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