Lady Boss

The Gorgeous Jennifer Esposito On Loving Life, Living Healthy, And Learning Her Way

- Oliver Jones

JENNIFER ESPOSITO STRIDES OFF THE NCIS SOUNDSTAGE, her white jacket—a cross between a lab coat and the kind of duster cowboys wear in windswept spaghetti westerns—billowing behind her as she goes.

The look is both studious and ready to rumble, an appropriate getup for Alexandra “Alex” Quinn, the poker-loving former Law Enforcement Training Center instructor she plays on the CBS megahit. Quinn is, after all, one of the most guarded of the three characters who joined the main cast for this season, the show’s 14th—which is saying something, given that one of her fellow newcomers has spent much of his law enforcement career in deep cover. She is unknown and somewhat unknowable, even to the woman who plays her.

“I’m exhausted,” Esposito says as she walks, her head pointed down and to the left, away from the craft services table where assorted cast and crew pocket trail mix and granola bars. “I got this job three days before it started shooting, and I haven’t had a chance to adjust. It was like, ‘OK, go!’ It’s insane; I’ve just been hanging on.”

It’s a happy exhaustion for Esposito, who was last a series TV regular in 2012 with Blue Bloods and was featured on Showtime’s The Affair last season. Not only is it the kind of intense ride one can expect when joining a juggernaut like NCIS, a top-five-rated show for eight consecutive seasons, it’s also the kind of exhaustion she craves, and it’s preferable to starting a show from scratch.