Why and How 8 Actors Exited the ‘One Chicago’ Franchise (PHOTOS)
Monica Raymund
Raymund left Fire in Season 6, with Gabriela Dawson taking a job in Puerto Rico and leaving spouse Matthew Casey (Jesse Spencer) behind.
“I knew that my six-year contract was coming to an end and I felt like I was hungry to explore a different role, a different story,” Raymund told The Chicago Tribune.
Lauren German
Fire fans mourned the loss of paramedic Leslie Shay when the character was killed in a building collapse in Season 2 after the writers decided it was time for a game-changing death.
“It had to be someone who was going to give us a big impact, as opposed to going for a lesser-known character,” executive producer Matt Olmstead told TVLine. “[We chose] Shay because it affected the most people.”
Charlie Barnett
Barnett’s Peter Mills (miraculously) left the Chicago Fire Department alive, choosing to move to North Carolina to spend time with his family in Fire‘s third season.
“It was solely based on bringing in new people for new stories,” Olmstead explained to TV Guide. “Otherwise it turns into a clown car.”
Dora Madison
Madison left Fire in Season 4 after Jessica “Chili” Chilton’s downward spiral — spurred by the death of her twin sister — cost her her job.
“You can’t just save up the big moments and departures and entrances for characters at episode one and episode 22,” Olmstead told The Hollywood Reporter.
Steven R. McQueen
Jimmy Borelli suffered severe burns and lost an eye in a petrol truck explosion during Chicago Fire Season 5, marking the end of his firefighting career and the end of McQueen’s time on the show.
“You can’t have everybody always get away cleanly and safely and always have happy endings,” Olmstead told The Hollywood Reporter. “Especially towards the end of the season, you take a hard look at everybody on the show in terms of all the characters and what kind of moves you want to make.”
Elias Koteas
In Chicago P.D. Season 5, Koteas’s Alvin Olinsky goes down for Hank Voight’s (Jason Beghe) murder of Kevin Bingham (Joseph Sikora) and then gets fatally stabbed by a fellow prison inmate.
“The writers and I kept coming back to this idea that Voight’s decision to kill Bingham should cost him something,” showrunner Rick Eid told TVLine. “Over time, we landed on the notion that Olinsky should be the person to pay for Voight’s sin because Voight admired and loved him so much.”
Brian Geraghty
P.D.‘s Sean Roman was seriously wounded in a Season 3 shooting and opted to leave the force and move to San Diego two episodes later, all because Geraghty was ready to pursue new projects.
“It was the most civil, level-headed, mutual fan-fest agreement and departure that I’ve ever been a part of, because he was just very decent about it,” Olmstead said of the actor during a TVLine interview.
Sophia Bush
Of all the One Chicago departures, Bush’s may have been the most contentious.
Her P.D. character, Erin Lindsay, accepted an FBI job offer in New York City at the end of Season 4.
“The reality was that my body was, like, falling apart, because I was really, really unhappy,” the actress said on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.
She also implied she tried to stick it out for a while: “I internalized and sort of like, inhabited that role of ‘pull the tugboat’ to the point where just because I’m unhappy or being mistreated or I’m being abused at work, I’m not gonna f—k this job up for all these people.”
Dick Wolf’s One Chicago franchise on NBC is losing three key players. Chicago Med‘s Colin Donnell and Norma Kuhling and Chicago P.D.‘s Jon Seda are all leaving at the end of this current season.
And considering Windy City’s finest face life-or-death stakes every day, a lot of other One Chicago characters have come and gone over the years.
While we brace for the impending exits of those three characters — and while we cross our fingers that they leave their shows in one piece — check out how and why eight other former mainstays left the franchise.
Chicago Med, Wednesdays, 8/7c, NBC
Chicago Fire, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC
Chicago P.D., Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC
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