Pauley Perrette has no plans to make a comeback to acting.
The former actress is best known for playing Abby Sciuto on the CBS series NCIS, which is debuting its 22nd season on October 14. She left the show in 2018, and also retired from acting four years prior. Pauley recently spoke to HELLO! in an article published on October 1 on why she won’t be heading back to Hollywood.
“I’m not ungrateful for the benefits that it gave to me,” she told the outlet. “But I’m a different person now and I want to be here for it – the good and the bad and the painful. I want to be me all the time, and it takes a good amount of courage for me to say that to myself but it’s authentically how I feel.”
NCIS season 22 release date, cast and episode count as CBS series finally returns this month
NCIS LA’s Eric Christian Olsen delivers disappointing update on Marty Deeks’ future with the CBS franchise
While the 55-year-old is no longer acting, she is still within the industry by executive producing documentaries such as her most recent project, Studio One Forever. The 2023 film told the story of a iconic gay disco in Los Angeles, California, and what it meant for LGBTQ men at the time. She explained that her desire to be real drove her to documentaries and away from acting.
“At this point in my life I have this deep need to find authenticity in everything, and being an actor, especially at certain points in my life, was a great escape; it’s like a drug because I didn’t have to be me, I could be somebody else. My character didn’t have all of the problems that I was having,” Pauley elaborated.
“It’s why I only watch documentaries, I want the truth. For me, going back to being an actor would be taking away from this life of true authenticity that I’m living 100% of the time,” she added.
Pauley began acting in the 1990s and has had various film and TV appearances over the years such as appearances in Almost Famous, Dawson’s Creek, CSI, and Broke. Broke was her last role before she retired from acting in 2020. In 2003, she got her hit role as Abby, a spunky and bubbly forensic scientist with a notable gothic style. She was on the show for 15 years by the time she exited at the end of the crime procedural’s 15th season.
Her shocking departure was rumored at the time to be because of co-star and the show’s lead Mark Harmon due to a on-set incident involving his dog. The two did not share screen time together in Pauley’s final episode. In June 2019 on Twitter (now X), she tweeted that she was “terrified of Harmon and him attacking” her and in May 2018, she mentioned “Multiple Physical Assaults” in a tweet addressing the situation specifically the lies in the media and on staying silent.
