What Happened to Wilmer Valderrama? New Dad on NCIS in 2026

If you were watching TV in the early 2000s, you knew Fez — the sweet, slightly clueless foreign exchange student from an unnamed country who was always chasing a girl and butchering an idiom. Wilmer Valderrama played him for eight seasons on “That ’70s Show,” and for a while it felt like that was all he’d ever be. Then a funny thing happened: he grew up, quietly reinvented himself as a dependable network leading man, and became one of the busier people in Hollywood. So what happened to the kid who said “I said good day!”? Here’s where Wilmer Valderrama is in 2026.

01Profile

Full name

Wilmer Eduardo Valderrama

Born

January 30, 1980 (46 years old)

Birthplace

Miami, Florida, USA

Occupation

Actor, producer, director, entrepreneur

Best known for

"That '70s Show" (1998–2006), "NCIS" (2016–present)

Family

Fiancée Amanda Pacheco, two children

Here’s a fact that surprises people: Valderrama was born in Miami but spent most of his childhood in Venezuela, moving back to the U.S. at 13 barely speaking English. The teenager who learned the language partly by watching sitcoms ended up starring in one of the decade’s biggest sitcoms. Not bad.

02The Rise: From Pacific Bell Commercials to Fez

Learning English, then learning to act

Valderrama’s father is Venezuelan and his mother is Colombian, and the family bounced between Miami and Venezuela before settling in Los Angeles. He got into acting through high school drama, landed an agent at a teacher’s suggestion, and made his professional debut in a Spanish-language Pacific Bell commercial. Small parts on a CBS miniseries and a Disney Channel show followed.

Fez becomes a phenomenon

Then came the audition that changed everything. In 1998, still a senior in high school when the pilot was shot, Valderrama was cast as Fez on Fox’s “That ’70s Show.” The character — a foreign exchange student whose home country was a running joke the writers never revealed — became a fan favorite. Alongside a young Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, Topher Grace, Danny Masterson, and Laura Prepon, Valderrama was part of an ensemble that defined an era of teen TV. The show ran for eight seasons, until 2006.

Cashing in on the fame

Fez made Valderrama a household name, and he leveraged it hard. He hosted the MTV insult-comedy series “Yo Momma” (2006–07), voiced the title character in the beloved Disney Junior cartoon “Handy Manny” for seven years, and became a fixture on the L.A. party scene. For a stretch, he was as famous for who he was dating as for what he was acting in.

03Life After That ’70s Show

When “That ’70s Show” ended, Valderrama faced the classic sitcom-star problem: how do you shake a character everyone loves so you can play someone else? For a while, the answer was unclear.

• 2006"That '70s Show" ends after eight seasons. Valderrama pivots to hosting "Yo Momma" on MTV and voicing "Handy Manny."
• 2007–2015A run of guest spots and supporting roles — "Grey's Anatomy," "The Awesomes," "From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series" — but no defining follow-up.
• 2016Joins the cast of "NCIS" as Special Agent Nick Torres in Season 14, his biggest role since Fez.
• 2020Gets engaged to model Amanda Pacheco; the couple welcomes their first child in 2021.
• 2023Reprises Fez in three episodes of Netflix's "That '90s Show," reconnecting with the franchise that made him.
• 2024Publishes his memoir "An American Story: Everyone's Invited," reflecting on his immigrant upbringing.

The through-line of those years was patience. Valderrama kept working, took the character-actor route, and waited for the right anchor role. It arrived in the form of a badge and a gun.

04The NCIS Reinvention

From comedy to a network procedural lead

In 2016, Valderrama joined “NCIS” — one of the most-watched dramas on the planet — as Special Agent Nick Torres. It was a full-on register change: the comic foreigner of “That ’70s Show” became a brooding, intense field agent on primetime CBS. The move worked. Torres became a fan-favorite character, and Valderrama has anchored the show for nearly a decade, weathering major cast turnover along the way.

He recently made news by revealing that he’d actually been offered a role years earlier on the spinoff “NCIS: Los Angeles” — the Marty Deeks part that eventually went to Eric Christian Olsen — but the timing wasn’t right. A year later, he decided he wanted the flagship series instead.

“The timing wasn’t right for me to consider it then. A year later, I knew I wanted to be on the mothership.” — Wilmer Valderrama, on turning down an early “NCIS: LA” offer, 2026

Producing, directing, and activism

Off camera, Valderrama built a second career as a producer and director. He co-founded a company, sits on the board of the voter-engagement group Voto Latino, and has been an active USO ambassador. He’s spent years developing a Zorro series for Disney, part of a broader effort to create Latino-led projects. He also directs episodes of “NCIS” itself.

05What He Is Doing Now

Still Torres on NCIS

As of 2026, Valderrama remains a series regular on “NCIS,” now in its 24th season. He’s teased that the long-running show still has major surprises in store for the character, and after nine years he’s become one of the anchors holding the veteran franchise together.

A new baby and a bar in D.C.

On the personal side, Valderrama and fiancée Amanda Pacheco welcomed their second child, son Wolf Monte, in July 2025, expanding their family. And in a new-venture twist, he’s now a co-owner of a Washington, D.C. cocktail bar called Elegancia, which he was in town promoting in January 2026. The kid who learned English from television has, at 46, become an actor-producer-entrepreneur with a network hit and a restaurant venture.

The memoir and the message

His 2024 memoir “An American Story: Everyone’s Invited” leaned into the immigrant-kid narrative that shaped him — the teenager who arrived from Venezuela barely speaking English and taught himself the language partly through television. He’s used his platform to advocate for Latino representation on screen and for civic participation off it, and the memoir doubles as a kind of thesis statement for the second half of his career. It’s a long way from Fez — and that’s exactly the point.

Taken together, the last decade tells the story of a performer who refused to be a punchline. The producing credits, the board seats, the Zorro development deal, the network drama, the memoir — they add up to a deliberate project of becoming more than the character that made him famous. Plenty of former teen sitcom stars talk about doing that. Valderrama actually did it.

06Summary

Wilmer Valderrama’s story isn’t a comeback so much as a slow, deliberate climb. He didn’t flame out after his sitcom ended; he waited, worked, and rebuilt himself into something more durable than a catchphrase.

The exchange student who couldn’t get the girl grew up to be a network leading man, a producer, a father, and a business owner. Fez would be proud — if only we knew what country to congratulate.