The Abby Effect: Inside Pauley Perrette's Inspiring, Satisfying and Traumatic Time as the Most Popular Person on NCIS
2 minute read
Remember that time you woke up and all of a sudden NCIS had been on for 15 years?
Where does the time go? But fans of the enduring CBS hit are waking up to a new landscape at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, one without forensics and tech expert Abby Sciuto, played by Pauley Perrette since 2003.
Perrette's character has been an indisputable fan favorite, one who will carry on in endless syndicated repeats, but whose real-time journey with the team is over. Other stars have left NCIS— Michael Weatherly enjoyed his own emotional exit in 2016—but no departure to this date has been fraught with as much tension and interest in a character's fate as
Perrette's goodbye this month.
Which within days had sparked a mystery of its own.
The departure itself wasn't a surprise—Perrette had
announced last October that this would be her final season—but a week after Abby's goodbye episode the actress decided she'd had enough of whatever inaccurate rationales the Internet had come up with to explain her leaving the stalwart crime procedural. (Last fall she tweeted that her planned exit had nothing to do with a rumored skincare line , for instance—a rumor that, coincidentally, also plagued
Joanna Gaines. That actually turned out to be a
separate serious issue , with the FCC slapping a network of online marketers with a $179 million fine for faking celebrity endorsements.)
She had just said in 2016 as NCIS ' 14th season got underway that "there's not a single day I don't wake up and I'm just so overwhelmed with being grateful." She told Hollywood Today Live , "I'm so happy. I love my job, I can't believe I get to play Abby Sciutto!" She also, because she was asked about the show's sparse haul of Emmy nominations, said that she'd rather be home on any night with her dogs, beer in hand, paychecks in the bank, than be "in a big uncomfortable dress standing in the sun and someone handing me an award."
But in the end Perrette made the environment she was leaving behind sound downright sinister .
Where does the time go? But fans of the enduring CBS hit are waking up to a new landscape at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, one without forensics and tech expert Abby Sciuto, played by Pauley Perrette since 2003.
Perrette's character has been an indisputable fan favorite, one who will carry on in endless syndicated repeats, but whose real-time journey with the team is over. Other stars have left NCIS— Michael Weatherly enjoyed his own emotional exit in 2016—but no departure to this date has been fraught with as much tension and interest in a character's fate as
Perrette's goodbye this month.
Which within days had sparked a mystery of its own.
The departure itself wasn't a surprise—Perrette had
announced last October that this would be her final season—but a week after Abby's goodbye episode the actress decided she'd had enough of whatever inaccurate rationales the Internet had come up with to explain her leaving the stalwart crime procedural. (Last fall she tweeted that her planned exit had nothing to do with a rumored skincare line , for instance—a rumor that, coincidentally, also plagued
Joanna Gaines. That actually turned out to be a
separate serious issue , with the FCC slapping a network of online marketers with a $179 million fine for faking celebrity endorsements.)
She had just said in 2016 as NCIS ' 14th season got underway that "there's not a single day I don't wake up and I'm just so overwhelmed with being grateful." She told Hollywood Today Live , "I'm so happy. I love my job, I can't believe I get to play Abby Sciutto!" She also, because she was asked about the show's sparse haul of Emmy nominations, said that she'd rather be home on any night with her dogs, beer in hand, paychecks in the bank, than be "in a big uncomfortable dress standing in the sun and someone handing me an award."
But in the end Perrette made the environment she was leaving behind sound downright sinister .
