After 22 years, NCIS remains a fan favorite and no character has had more of an impact than Abby Sciuto, played by Pauley Perrette.
But Pauley has now revealed the major change she made to the character early on in the show, admitting that when she "had no right to do so" she spoke up and became involved in the character development.
"In one of the first episodes, there was a really dirty joke – and I never understand dirty jokes or double entendres – and I didn't know what it meant, and it aired and I was horrified, not only because of my own blaring naivete, but because I just told a filthy joke on camera, and it's just not what I do," she tells HELLO! in a rare new interview.
"And that's who they wanted Abby to be in the beginning: there were parts of her that were going to be really saucy and sexual and I said, 'No, there's a better way to do this,' and as that notion was being formed, that's when I started realizing the power of her being good."
Pauley, 55, made her TV debut in the early 1990s but her work in NCIS from 2003 to 2018 brought her to mainstream fame.
The actress left the show after season 15 amid reports of a number of clashes behind the scenes with Mark Harmon, who played LeRoy Gibbs, and is now producing and directing documentaries, including Studio One Forever, telling the untold story of Los Angeles' iconic disco which became a beacon of hope for men in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the years since she left the series she has remained close with other co-stars including Brian Dietzen, but she tells HELLO! that the thing she is most grateful for from her time on the series is the impact Abby had on a generation of young women.
"My character got so big internationally – as it should have been because she was wonderful – and that was not by accident. I put a lot of thought [into her] because I knew that she had the potential to be a wonderful role model to young girls," shares Pauley.
"I love the fact that she's this alternative girl, but she also bowls with nuns and she goes to church and she's a good girl. We ended up normalizing someone who looks a little different than [others], and that was the greatest takeaway from being on NCIS, this colossal effect that, to this day fact, Abby has had on young girls.
"They call it the Abby Effect, there's literally thousands and thousands of young women that have gone into math and science and into forensics because of the character that I played, and I have such immense pride and I feel so blessed by that. Those are the things that not only change lives, but change the world when we allow women to thrive in the areas of math and science."