Actress Nia Peeples recently made a rare public appearance when she reunited with several Pretty Little Liars costars at Comic Con Midlands. Peeples had a recurring role as Pam Fields on the show from 2010 to 2017, and is also known for roles on The Young and the Restless, Walker, Texas Ranger, The Fosters, General Hospital, Fame, and more.
However, in 2019, Peeples had a spiritual awakening and chose to leave Hollywood behind to lead a simpler life. The decision came after she previously dealt with a medical issue that affected her eye in 2013.
Below, we rounded up everything to know about what happened to Peeples’ eye and the latest on her life today. Scroll down for more.
What happened to Nia Peeples’ eye?
Peeples’ right eye appears glassy and is a different color than her left eye. It was fully on display during the PLL reunion, and since Peeples has been out of the spotlight for several years now, many fans had questions about what happened. It’s actually something that the actress has spoken about before.
Peeples experienced trigeminal nerve damage in her right eye in 2013. The condition left her with scar tissue on her right eye, although the major physical change in her eye didn’t show up until 2023, she revealed in a January 2025 podcast interview. She is blind in the eye that was affected.
Per Mayo Clinic, trigeminal nerve damage “is a condition that causes intense pain similar to an electric shock on one side of the face.” It is a “chronic pain condition” and can be triggered by even light touch.
“The journey my right eye is taking me on is so expansive and humbling, inspiring and terrifying. And isn’t that life?” Peeples wrote on Instagram in 2024.
What is Nia Peeples doing now?
After getting divorced and leaving Hollywood behind her, Peeples said she “sold [her] place” and “gave away almost everything” she had. “I got a divorce, put my house on the market, and it sold the next day,” she revealed. “I had 30 days to figure out what to do. My [inner] guides let me know that I could not do the financial right thing, which would be reinvest the money that I got from my house into another house for tax reasons. They’re like, ‘Nope, you cannot do anything that is going to be a responsibility for you.’”
She said on the podcast that she lives “nowhere” and “everywhere.”
Peeples created Elements of Life, a “12-part monthly teleseminar on health, beauty, and fitness.” She described the program as a “lifestyle philosophy based on the dozen elements I believe have been the most powerful and grounding forces in my journey to live a unique, authentic, and satisfying life.”
Is Nia Peeples married?
No, Peeples is not currently married, but she has been married and divorced four times. Her first husband was actor Guy Ecker. They were married for two years in the 1980s. In 1989, she tied the knot with singer Howard Hewett, and their son, Christopher, was born that same year.
After divorcing Hewett in 1993, Peeples married Lauro Chartrand, a stuntman and director in 1997. They share daughter Sienna, who was born in 1998. Peeples and Chartrand divorced in 2004, and she went on to marry surfer Sam George in 2007. They were together for eight years before their 2015 split.
“The fourth one, I married someone I had met in my 20s,” Peeples shared on the podcast. “So we’d kind of known each other for a long time, but not well, and what happens over 23 years of kind of knowing someone is you create these stories about what that person is. So I was clarifying what I needed and what I wanted in my relationships and I was putting his picture on top of it. I was making it up.”
That fourth divorce was the “impetus” for Peeples’ decision to leave everything behind. “I realized as a wife and a partner and a mother, I couldn’t do better,” she admitted. An Ayahuasca journey opened up her eyes and she was divorced just months later.