NBC’s ‘The Voice’ contestant Anthony Riley explains surprising exit

Earlier this week, we were met with a variety of questions regarding what happened to Anthony Riley, the contestant from “The Voice” who left Pharrell Williams’ team before the start of the Knockout Rounds. Due to his departure (which was labeled as being for “personal reasons”), Sawyer Fredericks, Mia Z, and Paul Pfau were all put into a vocal fight against each other, where two of them (in Sawyer and Mia) ended up advancing.

While Riley was quiet immediately after the show aired and then also the next day, we do now know that the reason for his exit was apparently due to a medical issue. Speaking after the fact to a local NBC affiliate, he made it clear as to the reason, but did not go into many details beyond that:

“Unfortunately, I will be unable to continue my journey on ‘The Voice’ for season 8 due to medical reasons. Any other rumors are just that.”

There have of course been a variety of other rumors out there about this exit (trust us, we’ve heard all sorts of crazy ones), but at the end of the day much of them seemed to be to really satisfy one sole purpose: Causing as much drama in the public as possible.

In the end, Anthony seems to be moving forward, and so is the show. You’re going to get a chance to see both Sawyer and Mia in the live shows, and hopefully he will be at home cheering them on to victory. We will get a better chance to see some of these performances in the weeks ahead; we feel like the reason there was such curiosity around this particular exit is just because it is so rare over the course of the series.

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