‘NCIS LA’ Star Barrett Foa Taking Leave of Absence: See His Last 5 Tweets

NCIS: Los Angeles will be back in the fall — but without one of its major stars. Barrett Foa, who plays the trusty NCIS technical operator and intelligence analyst Eric Beale, will miss the first five episodes of the season so he can take another professional opportunity, CBS confirmed Thursday.

Fans looking for clues as to what other job Foa is taking that will cause him to miss out on NCIS won’t have much luck by checking his Twitter account, which hasn’t seen any activity from the 41-year-old since March, when he tweeted a photo of author Emily Fletcher’s book about meditation: Stress Less, Accomplish More: Meditation for Extraordinary Performance.

That same day, he retweeted his NCIS co-star LL Cool J, who had also promoted the book. “Meditation makes you good at, well… life!” Foa tweeted, thanking the Lip Sync Battle host.

Foa’s latest tweet came five months earlier in October 2018 when he was promoting Mean Girls on Broadway, then in February when he promoted Shoshana Bean and her band’s performance in Los Angeles.

Although Foa’s social media presence isn’t offering much insight into his current professional projects, Playbill reports that he’s set to star in a production of Angels in America at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis from Sept. 4 to Oct. 6. Foa will reportedly star as Prior Walter, the role Andrew Garfield played during the play’s recent successful Broadway revival. Meredith Baxter (Family Ties) will play Hannah and Peter Frechette (Thirtysomething) will play Roy Cohn. Other cast members include Ben Cherry, Jayson Speters, Valeri Mudeck, David Tyan Smith and Gina Daniels.

A CBS representative confirmed that Foa’s absence will be woven into the season 11 plot of NCIS: LA, when fans will learn that Hetty (Linda Hunt) gave Eric a clandestine case to work with an outside company. Fans will only find out where Eric was when he finally comes back in a late fall episode.

At the end of season 10, fans wondered if Eric and his professional partner/girlfriend Nell (Renee Felice Smith) would be back for season 11 after Nell left Los Angeles to be with her ailing mother in San Francisco and Eric decided to follow her. TV Line reported in June that Foa and Smith would return as series regulars.

Season 11 of NCIS: LA premieres on Sunday, Sept. 29 on CBS.

Photo credit: Walter McBride / Contributor / Getty