Pauley Perrette is best known as the goth-attired forensic scientist Abby Sciuto on NCIS.
Despite being one of TV's most popular stars for well over a decade,
there's much that fans may not know about this multitalented, multifaceted performer.
Keep watching to discover the untold truth of Pauley Perrette.
The popularity of everything from consumer products to entertainers is measured by
Q Scores. Compiling its data from consumer surveys, the company is considered to be, quote,
"the recognized industry standard" when it comes to measuring how consumers respond to various
celebrities. According to Entertainment Weekly, when the company released its January/February
2010 Performer Q study, Pauley Perrette wound up with an enviable score of 43 points.
In the years since, Perrette continued to be a Q score champion. According to The Wrap,
by 2018 her score had risen to 44 — impressive,
considering that the average score for a female television star was just 21.
The next-highest score for a television actress at that time was Empire's Taraji P. Henson,
with 36 points — certainly higher than average, but a full eight points behind Perrette.
Perrette's high Q score no doubt had something to do with NCIS being the world's most-watched
TV series for eight consecutive years. The irony, however, was that the 2018 Q score was released
after she'd announced she was quitting the show, and just days before her final episode aired.
Before breaking through on NCIS, Pauley Perrette was a struggling young actress
living in New York City who made some extra cash by appearing in music videos.
She explained in an interview with Parade:
"When I was in New York bartending, I was in a billion music videos.
I was in Madonna, George Michael, Salt-N-Pepa — it goes on and on."
As Perrette recalled, a 12-hour shoot for a music video would earn her an extra $50.
One music video that Perrette didn't mention to Parade was Metallica's video
for "The Unnamed Feeling," something that she acknowledged in a 2017 tweet:
"And yes that's me in the @Metallica 'The Unnamed
Feeling' video. As the panic attack girl, pretty fitting."
During Pauley Perrette's pre-fame years in New York City,
she was also busy pursuing her musical ambitions. She told Parade in 2012:
"I was into music before I was an actor. I was in an all-girl punk rock band that was amazing."
Throughout her acting career, Perrette has continued to showcase her talents as a singer
and songwriter. At the time, she told Parade about her current musical project, Stop Making
Friends. In fact, one of her Stop Making Friends songs, "Somebody Saved You," made it onto the NCIS
Benchmark Soundtrack album. Discussing another of her songs, "Attention Please", she continued:
"I collaborate with a lot of people. I have a new single out with D.M.C. from Run-D.M.C."
In 2015, Perrette appeared on Entertainment Tonight to debut another single,
"Beautiful Child" – featuring her NCIS co-star Michael Weatherly on piano. She said of him:
"He's a very talented musician. He actually plays piano on every song that I've ever written."
Along with music, animals are another of Pauley Perrette's passions.
She revealed in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2013:
"I'm so obsessed with animals."
At the time, Perrette had just been awarded the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association's Tom
Mankiewicz Leadership Award, described as, quote, "an honor given to a philanthropic
entertainer who has held a leadership role in local or global wildlife conservation."
As a longtime animal lover and pet owner, Perrette may also have discovered the secret to feline and
canine and longevity. As she joked to People, her corgi-dachshund-Chihuahua mix was, quote,
"probably about 237 years old," while two of her cats made it to ages 20 and 24. She continued:
"I'll tell you the secret: It's because I talk to them all the time. I really think
it's talking to them all the time and giving them that kind of love. They want to stay."
Pauley Perrette expanded into the culinary arena in 2011, when she and pals Darren
Greenblatt and Matthew Sandusky opened their own bakery in New York City. She told CNBC:
"Me and my two best friends took my mother's recipes and all of
her inspiration and opened a Southern country bake shop in Manhattan called
Donna Bell's Bake Shop. That was her name — Donna Bell."
As Perrette explained, the Hell's Kitchen bakery used the recipes
that Perrette's mother — who passed away from breast cancer
in 2002 — taught her while growing up in the South. She said of the venture:
"We're so proud of it, and just to pay homage to my mother is fantastic."
The bakery thrived for nearly a decade, until it became one of many businesses
to shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to W42ST.NYC,
the business was hit hard, given that tourism in Manhattan had dried up and most of the
office workers who'd made up much of the bakery's clientele were working from home.
On Christmas Day of 2020, a sad message appeared on the bakery's Facebook page, announcing:
"We are closing this weekend, for good."
In a 2015 appearance on The Queen Latifah Show,
Pauley Perrette made an admission that many of her fans likely found shocking:
"So I'm blonde, and I've been dyeing my hair black for over a decade."
In an interview with Extra, Perette said that what she didn't realize was
that over time she'd developed an acquired allergy to the hair dye she'd been using.
In 2014, this resulted in her being hospitalized after suffering an extreme reaction when half her
face became swollen and puffy, something she documented in a photo she posted on Twitter.
"It's an acquired allergy that you get if you've been
dyeing your hair black for a really long time."
Speaking with KCAL9, Perrette warned others who dye their hair to be aware
of the potential hazards they likely didn't even know about:
"The most important thing to me is that anyone out there that dyes their hair,
particularly black, you need to be aware of the symptoms."
On NCIS, Abby Sciuto is distinguished by her goth wardrobe and the spider-web tattoo
that adorns her neck. However, In an interview with Extra, she confirmed that the web is fake.
According to Perrette, producers of NCIS, quote, "wanted tattoos that were visible no
matter what I was wearing." In a video detailing her transformation into Abby
by the NCIS hair and makeup team, Perrette described how much she resents the process:
"I have to prepare myself for the dreaded putting on of the neck tattoo. I hate the tattoo."
Perrette also joked about her character's propensity for tats in an interview with TV Guide:
"It's the only job I've ever had where my bosses are excited when I get new tattoos!"
Pauley Perrette and musician Coyote Shivers married in 2000, and divorced
in 2004. As Fox News reported, Perrette was granted a restraining order against her ex,
and for years continued to accuse him of harassing her. She described the situation
as akin to being, quote, "in the middle of a horror movie I didn't audition for."
Nearly a decade after their divorce, RadarOnline reported that Shivers was arrested for violating
the order, and sentenced to 90 days in jail. As TMZ pointed out, Shivers was
on probation at the time, following his arrest the previous year for violating that same order.
According to Shivers, however, it was Perrette who'd been stalking him. In a lawsuit he filed
in 2014, he accused her of a, quote, "decade-long campaign of harassment... intended to financially,
physically, and emotionally ruin [him]." The lawsuit was dismissed; as Page Six pointed out,
in 2008 Shivers had been designated a "vexatious litigant" in the state of California — a term for:
"Those who abuse the legal system with multiple meritless lawsuits
aimed at harassing or subduing a singular target."
Pauley Perrette appeared alongside legendary shock rocker Alice Cooper in a 2015 episode of
The Late Late Show. Host James Corden told his guests that they share a big similarity in that
they both have, quote, "quite extreme phobias." After joking about the possibility that she was
terrified of ovens, Perrette revealed her actual phobias, the oddest of them being magicians.
When asked by Corden if she was "scared" of magicians, Perrette elaborated:
"It's all about deception, it's all about foolery,
it's all about something, and I can feel them coming from, like, a mile away."
When Corden pointed out that her fear of magicians was kind of an odd phobia to have,
Perrette told him to ask Cooper to reveal his biggest phobia.
He revealed that he hates balloon animals, leading Corden to pull out a balloon.
Perrette ultimately didn't feel an obligation to defend her phobia. She said:
"Here's the thing I say about phobias, is, by definition,
they're irrational fears. So therefore we don't have to rationalize them to you."
In 2015, Pauley Perrette made headlines when she was violently attacked by an
unhoused man in Los Angeles. She shared her experience on Twitter, explaining that she
was walking across a street when the man grabbed her. She described the incident:
"[He] pinned my arm, punched me in the nose, forehead repeatedly telling
me he was going to kill me. [...] I was alone, terrified and trapped."
As the Los Angeles Daily News reported,
a suspect was subsequently arrested, with Perrette able to positively identify him in court.
Writing about the incident for Time, Perrette pointed out, quote, "the obvious irony of me
being an outspoken advocate for the homeless." She also revealed that despite the trauma and
PTSD she was still experiencing, she'd come to forgive her attacker. She said:
"Of course I forgive him. I have no anger,
only sadness. He is very confused, he's homeless and he needs help."
Fans of NCIS were devastated when, in 2017, Pauley Perrette announced she was leaving
the show. She didn't go into details, but shortly before her final episode aired,
she took to Twitter to tell fans to ignore the tabloids' bogus speculations.
In a followup tweet, she alluded to not telling the truth over fear for the jobs of the NCIS crew.
She then tweeted about, quote, "a 'machine' keeping me silent."
The plot thickened in 2019 when she tweeted:
"NO I AM NOT COMING BACK! EVER! (Please stop asking?) I am terrified of Harmon and him
attacking me. I have nightmares about it. I have a new show that is SAFE AND HAPPY. You'll love it."
Subsequently, TMZ reported that the whole thing stemmed from a 2016 incident in which NCIS star
Mark Harmon brought his dog to the set. When the dog bit a member of the crew, Perrette
complained to the powers that be and demanded that the dog no longer be allowed on the set.
As a result, Harmon's dog was reportedly confined to his trailer when it wasn't on a leash.
Perrette alleged that Harmon, quote, "body checked" her the following year,
something she perceived as a form of, quote, "payback."
After her departure from NCIS in 2017, CBS wanted to get back into the Pauley Perrette business.
In 2019, Deadline reported on the network's announcement that she'd be
starring in a new sitcom titled Broke. The show made its debut in the spring of 2020,
with Perrette starring as a single mom who's forced to open her home to her
snobby sister and her formerly wealthy husband when they lose their fortune.
As Perrette explained to TV Insider, when she left NCIS
she wasn't planning on jumping back into another series. She joked:
"I retired for a while, and I watched a lot of TV with my dogs and I was really good at it."
Admitting how, quote, "no one believed" that she'd actually retired, Perrette told CBS
Philly that it was her intention — until the offer came through and she instantly fell in
love with Broke's showrunners. The fact that Broke was a comedy was also a bonus. She said:
"[Making people laugh] is like one of the most rewarding things you can possibly do."
Broke was ultimately cancelled after its first season.
As of the making of this video, Perette is retired. If she never ends up returning to
the screen, it's not like she can't afford it. After more than a decade starring on one of TV's
all-time most popular shows, she's managed to sock away a few bucks — 22 million of them, according
to Celebrity Net Worth. In fact, that same website estimated that Perrette earned $200,000
per episode on NCIS. Given that a network TV drama will typically produce 22 episodes per season,
that would have given her an annual salary of $4.4 million during her last few years on the show.
That's in line with a 2012 TV Guide feature on television's highest-paid actors,
which reported her salary then as $175,000 per episode.
Perrette hasn't been keeping all that money to herself, either.
During the 2020 Christmas season, according to Fox 11 Los Angeles,
Perrette gave out cash gifts to several families who faced dire financial situations due to the
pandemic, with each receiving $3,000 of her own money. She said of her acts of charity:
"Philanthropy and giving is more contagious than a virus."
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