Pauley Perrette, who previously played Abby Scuito on NCIS, talked about the importance of her character
Pauley Perrette, despite her soured end on NCIS, thinks of her character and her impact fondly.
In a May 2018 interview of the CBS chat show, The Talk, the former actress spoke about her time on the CBS police procedural as forensic scientist Abby Sciuto and her upcoming exit. One of the talk show’s cohosts, Sara Gilbert, highlighted how Abby has inspired many young girls to go into the fields of STEM and forensics, and how that influence and career-path is called “the Abby effect.”
“Yeah, it’s been such an incredible journey, this one little fictional television character,” Pauley said. “It has been enormous and overwhelming for young girls around the world, every country in the world, and over the course of 15 years … to have modeled themselves after this TV character, and it made math and science not only a viable plan for them but it made it accessible and fun. And it inspired these girls, which has been so heartwarming.”
“These are people who, 16 years later, have gotten their degrees in science and math,” she added.
Pauley played the fan-favorite spunky character with her iconic gothic style for 15 years. She first debuted in 2003 and left in 2018 during the show’s 15th season. At the time, her surprising exit was rumored to be because of costar Mark Harmon (who plays Leroy Jethro Gibbs) and an on-set incident involving his dog. The pair did not share any screen time together in Pauley’s final episode. In a series of tweets on May 13, 2018, Pauley addressed the situation by calling out the media and the “powerful publicity ‘machine'” for their lies and said “he did it,” which seemingly referred to Mark.
In a second tweet, Pauley went on to imply being bullied at work, saying it was “horrifying.” She also wrote about “Multiple Physical Assaults,” suggesting what she experienced on the show and advised people to stay safe as well as tell others when they’re in unsafe predicaments. Then in June 2019, she doubled down on X that she was not coming back to NCIS and that she’s “terrified of Harmon and him attacking” her.
Executive producer Charles Floyd Johnson confirmed that Pauley’s exit was connected to a onset incident with Mark’s dog to The Hollywood Reporter in 2023: “In Pauley Perrette’s case, there was an incident with the show with a dog.”
“The dog was Mark Harmon’s, and apparently the dog bit someone. Pauley was a huge, huge SPCA [Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] animal person. And then the dog kept coming with Harmon, and she felt it wasn’t safe for the show. By the end of that year, she just felt like it wasn’t working for her anymore, and it was time to move on,” he said.
Pauley no longer acts since retiring in 2022 and disclosed the reason to HELLO! in an article. She stated how she’s a “different person now” and she wants to be herself “all the time.”
While the 55-year-old no longer acts, she still works within the industry by executive producing documentaries such as her most recent 2023 project, Studio One Forever, about a popular and prominent gay disco in Los Angeles, California.