BY GOLLY, IT’S PAULEY
Actress a hit with NCIS fans
There are interesting lives, and then there’s Pauley Perrette. When the going gets weird, it helps to be grounded.
Perrette plays forensic lab analyst Abby Sciuto, arguably NCIS’s most popular character with younger, online fans, in a procedural thriller that is one of TV’s most watched prime-time broadcast dramas, after 12 seasons.
Abby is “like an anime, a cartoon character,” Perrette said.
Abby sleeps in a coffin, “the happiest goth you’ll ever meet.”
“She’s an expert at everything,” Perrette said. “Which wouldn’t be possible in real life. She’s a ballistics expert, a physics expert, a chemistry expert, botany — everything. Every script, it’s something new.”
Things can get weird off-screen, though. There was the online stalker. There was the identity thief who pretended to be her on Facebook. (Perrette, an avid user of Twitter with half a million followers, has sworn off Facebook.)
“I don’t have any feelings about Facebook because I’m not on Facebook,” she said. “I’m only on Twitter. I work for a lot of charities, and it’s a good way to get the word out and use that forum to do really, really good things.
“The other good thing about (Twitter) is that a person in the public eye needs to dispel rumours. Most of us feel that way. If you’re in the spotlight, nobody talks to you; they talk about you or at you. Things come up that are complete fabrications, and this is a way to reach your fans directly and say, ‘No, this is the way it really is.’ That part is good. Having a direct connection with your fans is great. They enjoy it, and it’s interesting to see what they’re doing.
“The part that I don’t like is that it can be a cowardly way to be cruel to people. That part really bothers me. Even if it’s somebody that I know who’s being catty on the Internet, it bothers me to my soul. It’s this forum for cowardly bullies. … To just hide behind your computer and spread hate and nastiness and grossness, I’ll never get that. That’s the part that always breaks my heart about the Internet. It makes me want to throw my computer under the pier.”
Perrette has used her Twitter following to galvanize support for everything from animal rights to saving a cash-strapped shelter for battered women from closing.
A New Orleans native, she studied forensics and criminal justice at a state university in Georgia, and harboured ambitions of becoming an FBI agent, while playing in a rock ’n’ roll band.
By a circuitous route that included being a New York City bartender, appearing in TV commercials and donning advertising signboards, she was cast as a forensic lab scientist in a popular TV show.
“I hear from kids and not just kids but their parents, grandparents, teachers. I get contacted constantly, all the time, about that. They call it ‘the Abby effect,’ about how young girls want to be like her and pursue careers in math and science. .”
Perrette has a love-hate relationship — hate, mostly — with gadgets and technology.
“I’m not into new stuff,” she said. “I have an old laptop. I have an old car. … I love my car. It was almost totalled by a kid who was texting. A week later I dropped my iPhone in the toilet. I don’t like new stuff.”
Abby keeps her grounded: “She’s like a role model to me. I want to be her when I grow up.”