What's Abby from NCIS doing now? Pauley Perrette's life took a very different turn
If you stopped watching NCIS when the pigtails and platform boots left the lab, you're not alone — Abby Sciuto's exit in 2018 hit fans hard. What her portrayer did next, though, surprised almost everyone: she walked away from acting entirely, and as of 2026 she has zero plans to come back.
Why she left NCIS
Pauley Perrette played Abby for 15 seasons and 352 episodes, from the show's 2003 premiere to her farewell in May 2018. The exit wasn't amicable. Perrette later said she felt unsafe around co-star Mark Harmon and alleged "multiple physical assaults" during her time on the show; CBS Television Studios confirmed she had raised a workplace concern more than a year before her departure and said it worked with her to find a resolution. She has vowed never to return to the series.
One last show, then done
Perrette took exactly one more lead role — the CBS sitcom Broke, which ran for a single season in 2020 before cancellation. When it ended, so did her acting career, by her own choice. She retired that year at the height of her fame.
The health scare
In 2022, Perrette revealed she had suffered a stroke the year before, in 2021 — one of what she's called a few devastatingly difficult years that also included losing her father. She recovered, and has repeatedly described herself since as happy, healthy, and grateful.
What she does now
Her life today looks nothing like a network TV schedule. She lives quietly in California, works on home projects, executive produces documentaries, and pours her energy into civil rights causes and humanitarian advocacy. She still surfaces occasionally — in June 2026, NCIS co-star Brian Dietzen posted a photo of the two reuniting at a concert, and fans lost their minds.
As for acting again, she settled that in a 2024 interview with Hello!:
"I want to be me all the time," Perrette said, explaining that acting had once been an escape from herself — and she doesn't need one anymore.