Sophia Bush finally explains Chicago PD season 5 exit
After months of near-silence Sophia Bush has finally answered the question on the minds of many: Why did she leave Chicago PD?
On paper, the move was certainly baffling given that Bush had a prominent role at the heart of the series and, to go along with it, got to do a lot of different, exciting things. Erin Lindsay wasn’t your typical TV character — she was strong, she was troubled, and she wasn’t pigeonholed into being a token love interest or someone with only one or two dimensions. Contractually, her exit was also interesting given that most network/studio deals are for at least six seasons, with many people behind the scenes having an option that can go beyond that.
Bush finally opened up about the exit in a post on her Instagram responding so someone saying that the show may have dropped her more than the other way around, something that makes almost zero sense at all since she was the star. Bush had the following to say:
“Took me a long time and a lot of hard work to get out of that show … I left because I wanted to. End of story.”
Maybe someone wanted a more thorough explanation for this than what she offered, but clearly this is not something that Sophia really feels the need to get into. Also, she doesn’t really owe anyone an explanation given that this is her life and she has the obligation to make whatever choices that she wants to. If NBC was okay letting her out of her contract then that’s the choice that they made. If she didn’t want to be there it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense to keep her around.
The one thing that remains probably the biggest bummer from our vantage point at CarterMatt is how we never even got a scene of Lindsay saying goodbye to most of Intelligence. It would’ve been nicer to have that closure but sometimes that doesn’t happen. She is moving on — she does have a new deal that allows her to be in her own star vehicle in the coming year — and Chicago PD is doing the same. So far Bush’s exit also isn’t having a great deal of an impact on the ratings either. To date season 5 is down around 12% year-to-year, but that’s about average for network shows these days. It’s completely arbitrary to say that Bush is the reason for that when many other shows fall by this or more.
Let’s just put this to bed
You may want more information, but here’s a reality check for all of us: It’s not coming. This is all we’re going to get about this situation seemingly. If we were meant to get more, we would have more to report about. We just have to move on.
If you want to move on to our CarterMatt Facebook page to get more updates (how about that segue?), you can do that over at the link here. (Photo: NBC.)