The Stunning Transformation Of Abigail Spencer
Abigail Spencer has always wanted to act. Ever since she was young, Spencer has sought opportunities to get on stage, perform, and entertain. "I had a dream since I was little, and just the fact that I got opportunities to sing and dance and do theater, community theater, growing up going to the beach, and I'm still friends with my 5-year-old, kindergarten best friend," she reflected to The Pensacola News Journal. "I have lifelong friends from growing up together in Gulf Breeze, [Florida]."
In fact, that's the story of her career — she's a born performer and loyal friend. Spencer has been on many, many television shows, putting in her time as everything from a supporting player to the lead. Her career has been one of constant forward motion, always seeking out that next role, always looking for new ways to develop her artistry and entertain audiences. In that way, it's been a career of transformation, showing off her ability to roll with the punches as her shows have gotten canceled.
It's not bad to be an underdog, and in interviews, Spencer often downplays her significance. "I don't want to make what I do too important," she told PopSugar after a fan outcry led to the revival of her show "Timeless" on NBC. "It's like that happy medium of, I hopefully get to bring joy in people's [lives] and entertain people and make them feel things. That's part of the joy of being an entertainer." Getting to that point took work, so read on for the stunning transformation of Abigail Spencer.
Abigail Spencer's father was a surfer
Abigail Spencer was born on August 4, 1981, and raised in Florida by Yancey Spencer, an iconic Gulf Coast surfer. "He was very much on the forefront of the surfing scene down there," she told Garden & Gun, noting that her father went to the beach with a friend one day and decided to give surfing a try while his friend hit on some girls. "He caught his first wave and got tubed, but he noticed that everyone on the beach was watching him," she explained. "He fell totally in love with surfing that day."
Marking Father's Day in 2020, the future "Grey's Anatomy" star wrote a lengthy Instagram caption about how much she misses her dad. "His impact reverberates. I love you. I miss you. I hear you in the birds. I see you in the waves. I feel you in the flowers. Your spirit forever with & through me," she wrote.
The budding young actor loved the area in Florida where she grew up, describing its beauty to Garden & Gun. "The sand is like sugar. The water is pure turquoise. It's like the Caribbean," she said. "Every time I go back, I see the area thriving but keeping that Gulf Coast beach culture." Spencer admitted to missing the South now that she's famous. "There is nothing like Southern hospitality," she said. "It's such a beautiful and genuine thing. And there's a lot of space to dream and think."
She was discovered on Live with Regis & Kathie Lee
Because of Yancey Spencer's prominence in the local surfing scene, he managed to befriend future television host Kathie Lee Gifford when she was still on the pageant circuit. By the time his daughter Abigail was a teenager, a college-bound high school student who wanted to make a go at an acting career in New York City, Yancey got her into a taping of "Live with Regis & Kathie Lee." Abigail explained to Garden & Gun that she didn't expect Gifford to lend her a hand, but she did. "She says, 'Abigail Spencer is here with us today. Abigail, tell everyone what you're doing here in New York.' And all those giant cameras turned on me," Abigail recalled.
She took advantage of the moment and told the viewing audience at home that she was an aspiring entertainer. It turned out to be a pivotal moment in her life. "I was green and had no fear," she recalled. "One of Kathie Lee's assistants started calling some casting directors during the show, as a favor." One of those calls happened to be to the person who cast "All My Children," and she happened to be watching the show that day. Within weeks, she had a meeting, and soon after that, Abigail Spencer had nabbed her first television role.
Abigail Spencer got her start on All My Children
Abigail Spencer never intended to work on soap operas, but when the role of Becca Tyree practically fell into her lap, she couldn't turn it down. "Not to say that I was a star after that because it's still a lifetime of work for a moment of opportunity," She told IndieWire. "It was just an opportunity that I couldn't pass up. I just felt like, 'Man, these things don't come around that often.' So I just went for it." Her willingness to jump at the opportunity paid off. She played Becca on the sudser for several years, and she quickly became a fan favorite, too. In 2000, Spencer won the Outstanding Female Newcomer Award from Soap Opera Digest.
Because of her role, Spencer never actually got a chance to go to college. She explained to FIRST For Women that she was able to participate in one major teenage milestone event. "I flew home [to Florida] for my prom and instead of going to Carnegie Mellon, I deferred my enrollment and went to The School of 'All My Children,'" she said. "I learned on the job."
Spencer elaborated during an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon." She joked, "I felt like I kind of like got a handle on it, except for there was one thing that I was just the worst at: that long stare at the end of every [soap opera] scene."
She became a mother in her twenties
Abigail Spencer married Disney executive Andrew Pruett in 2004 and kept working as an actor, with episodic roles on shows like "CSI" and "Gilmore Girls," as well as a starring turn on the Lifetime crime drama series "Angela's Eyes" that lasted one season. In 2006, her mother Lydia spoke with her hometown newspaper The Gulf Breeze News about her daughter's life in Hollywood. "I'm very proud of her and of her personal life. It's not easy to maintain an 'everyday life' in show business," her mother said.
In 2008, Spencer became a mother when she gave birth to her son Roman. She later told Harper's Bazaar that this was a fruitful time in her life that taught her a lot about what she wanted. "When I had my son, that whole process of being pregnant and giving birth, it really freed me from feeling the need to prove anything," she said, adding she also began thinking about her time on set differently. "I kind of started working more, but at the same time I started working less, too, by getting more specific and focused and understanding the value of my time."
When her son was only a few years old, Spencer and Pruett divorced. TMZ reported in early 2012 that the couple had split the year before. They seem to have parted on good terms, because Spencer, who filed for the divorce, asked for joint custody with her now ex-husband.
Mad Men sent her career to new heights
For a while in the 2000s, Abigail Spencer was focused on being a mother. She told Garden & Gun that she tried out a lot of jobs in her twenties, too, recalling, "I quit acting for a year. I started a band. I was a nanny. I hosted in a restaurant. I worked a lot and I failed a lot. But the whole time I was training." In 2009, her next big break came along: a role on "Mad Men," then one of the biggest shows on television. Spencer claims that she dreamed about being on the show before she got the call.
When Spencer joined the cast of 'Mad Men', she was offered the part of a schoolteacher with whom Jon Hamm's Don Draper has an affair. "I loved the character. I was ready. I had taken a break. I felt replenished," Spencer explained. The show changed everything. "'Mad Men' was the first time anybody had really seen my work," she said. "That was the shift."
After "Mad Men," there was no going back, as Spencer was well on her way to stardom. She told The New York Times that the part became the role from which most people know her. "I was taking Pilates this morning and this woman was like, 'Oh my gosh, were you the teacher from 'Mad Men?'" she said. "It just stays with people," Spencer added, "and that's such a beautiful thing."
Her role on Suits proved to be a pivotal point in her life
If Abigail Spencer thought her role on "Mad Men" would turn out to be a defining role in her career, she had no idea that another, even more iconic part was just around the corner. Beginning in 2011, Spencer played Dana Scott on 15 episodes of "Suits," the USA Network's legal drama. Dana first appeared in Season 1 and became a bigger character through much of Season 3.
The show became a huge hit when it was added to Netflix in 2023, and Spencer now says that her time on "Suits" is her most recognizable role to fans who approach her in the street. On an episode of "The Talk," Spencer recalled spending that summer in Europe. "I was walking around Europe and I was like, when did I get so famous? Like, I was so much more famous than I had ever been ... people knew my first and my last name!" she marveled. "What a thing with streaming, that things can come back around."
A role alongside James Franco led to a fast friendship
In 2013, Abigail Spencer secured a role in "Oz the Great and Powerful," a Sam Raimi film that served as a prequel to "The Wizard of Oz." She played May, the assistant to the Kansas magician who eventually travels to Oz and becomes the iconic Wizard from the original story. That magician was played by James Franco, and the two evidently got along very well on set in ways that Franco and Busy Phillips did not. Their meeting sparked a creative partnership that would continue for years.
Spencer addressed Franco's reputation as an out-there auteur in an interview with The New York Times. "People always think, 'Oh he's an enigma, he's doing all these things,'" she said. "He just loves to work. It's really simple." She appeared in his film "Bukowski," about Charles Bukowski, and he even convinced her to be part of a theatrical performance piece. "I flew out to Detroit and we went down to this amazing, dilapidated train station, and we did this weird, wild, crazy 'Othello' piece," she recalled.
Franco also helped her shop an original script called "Wrong Number" around town, which Spencer herself wrote. The rom-com would have centered around people who meet on a wrong-number call, eventually falling in love. "I didn't think I would be that into a romantic comedy, but I think structurally it's unlike anything I've seen," Franco told The Hollywood Reporter. Unfortunately, the project never materialized.
She led several TV shows in 2015
Abigail Spencer had a very busy 2015. She starred in the second season of "True Detective" and, although the show was set in California, Spencer told Garden & Gun that she could feel creator Nic Pizzolatto's Gulf Coast sensibility in the writing. "There is a shared knowingness I have with Nic, something to do with the Gulf Coast. When I read his script, I felt like I was a child again, inserting myself into the story," she said. "That's why I got into acting in the first place, to do and feel just that."
That year also saw her Sundance TV show "Rectify" return for a third season. In that series, Spencer played the sister of a man who was wrongfully convicted of a crime. She told Deadline that even though she had such a busy year, she wasn't too concerned with what it all meant for her career trajectory as a whole. "I will say I've been hearing for the past 15 years of my career that I'm just 'one role away,'" she explained. "I'm just working. ... I'm just trying to see what I need to do today on set for the character I'm playing right now, so I am just grateful."
She made headlines in 2018 when she attended a royal wedding
Though they knew each other before starring together on "Suits," Abigail Spencer became close friends with another actor on the show: a woman by the name of Meghan Markle. That closeness meant Spencer was the first to find out a significant piece of news in Markle's personal life. "I could feel everything vibrating," Spencer recalled in the Netflix docuseries "Meghan & Harry" (via Women's Health), explaining that Markle sat her down while the two were shopping in Bergdorf Goodman to tell her she was in love. "I was screaming," Spencer said, "because I could feel it was different."
Markle was, of course, in love with Prince Harry. In the lead-up to their royal wedding, Spencer told Entertainment Tonight that she had some words for the prince. "He's very lucky," Spencer smiled. "She's a trusted friend and one of the most glorious people I've ever met."
It's no surprise, then, that Spencer was in attendance at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding, which was watched by millions of people around the world. Spencer's blue dress was covered in white polka dots and a big white collar and she wore a blue flower fascinator in her hair. Spencer had nothing but glowing things to say about her friend's wedding when she returned to the States, telling People Now (via Daily Mail) that it was the best wedding she'd ever attended. "She's incredible, and everything was an extension of them and their love," Spencer said. "I felt honored to be there."
The Timeless fandom made Abigail Spencer reconsider social media
By 2016, Abigail Spencer had starred on a staggering number of television shows with strong fan bases, including appearances on "How I Met Your Mother," "Hawthorn," and "Burning Love." That year, though, she began leading the cast of NBC sci-fi drama "Timeless," a role that once again kick-started her career to a new level. While she'd had people be passionate about her work before, the fandom that sprang up around "Timeless" felt like something different. This time, they were very vocal online.
Spencer told Brief Take that she initially wasn't very interested in social media. "For me, I'm not into selfies or self-promotion, that's childish, that's tough for me, that's definitely not ... I've had a tough time with social media because I don't enjoy that aspect," she said. Instead, she began to look at sites like X, formerly Twitter, as an extension of the time-travel storytelling she was doing each week on "Timeless." In other words, this was her chance to bring a spotlight to various underrepresented parts of history. "It felt appropriate to just use my platform or anybody that might be checking in with me, as a way to kind of shine a light over here, as an extension for the show," she said. "Then it feels like it's part of my life."
Extended Family made her a sitcom star
Over the course of her career, Abigail Spencer has been on just about every kind of television show, leading to an impressive net worth. She's been on soap operas and prestige dramas, from sci-fi shows to crime thrillers and network procedurals. In 2023, Spencer joined the cast of "Extended Family," an NBC sitcom about a modern family that chooses to co-parent after a divorce.
Spencer told Pop Culture Planet that the show's subject matter is what got her interested, considering she is a divorced woman who co-parents her son with her ex-husband. "I just wanted to see this kind of divorce on television," she said, noting that she felt a kinship with her character, Julia. "I wanted to do a comedy because this is what I need personally. I need to laugh. I need to be a part of something like this and bring more joy and delight."
The show is a multi-cam sitcom, which is one thing Spencer hadn't done. She told FIRST For Women that she enjoyed learning this new way of performing. After all, it turned out to be not all that different from how she got her start. "I've been thinking about my time on 'All My Children' a lot because I haven't been on a studio stage with multiple cameras since then. There's a similarity, and it feels like I get to do some repair," she said, "because I was so young when I was on that show!"