Pauley Perrette
Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for Los Angeles LGBT Center

Former NCIS star Pauley Perrette has opened up in a rare interview about her retirement from acting and why she has no interest in returning to the silver screen.

Speaking to Hello! magazine, Perrette said she will “never again” return to acting, even though she is “not ungrateful for all the benefits that it gave me.”

“But I’m a different person now, and I want to be here for it – the good and the bad and the painful,” she continued. “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.”

Perrette is best known for playing forensic scientist Abby Sciuto on NCIS from 2003 to 2018. Following her exit from NCIS, she landed the lead role of Jackie in the CBS sitcom Broke. However, Broke was canceled after one season in May 2020, and Perrette retired from acting two months later.
Pauley Perrette as Abby in NCIS - 'Viral'

Photo: Darren Michaels/CBS ©2015 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The former actress is now working on documentaries; she was a producer on Studio One Forever, a doc that details the untold story of Los Angeles’ iconic disco, which became a beacon of hope for men in the 1970s and 1980s.

“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,” Perrette told Hello!

“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.

In 2019, following her exit from NCIS, Perrette took to X (then known as Twitter) to declare, “NO I AM NOT COMING BACK! EVER! (Please stop asking?) I am terrified of [Mark] Harmon and him attacking me. I have nightmares about it.”

It had been previously reported that Perrette left NCIS amid conflict with series star Harmon over an on-set incident involving a dog bite and alleged multiple physical assaults. At the time, CBS released a statement saying the network is “committed to a safe work environment on all our shows.”