‘Up All Night’ season 2 spoilers: Christina Applegate announces surprise exit
There’s some rather surprising news coming out this afternoon when it comes to “Up All Night”: they have already lost the show’s creator in Emily Spivey, and now one of the stars in Christina Applegate is also jumping ship from a program that was already knocking on death’s door to begin with after some terrible ratings.
In a new statement that was first posted by Deadline, Applegate cited the creative differences with the show, which include a move to a multi-camera format that will take the show even further away from its original premise, as a reason why she is leaving:
“It’s been a great experience working on Up All Night, but the show has taken a different creative direction and I decided it was best for me to move on to other endeavors … Working with Lorne Michaels has been a dream come true and I am grateful he brought me into his TV family. I will miss the cast, producers and crew, and wish them the best always.”
It’s understandable why NBC wanted to at least give the series a good shot to succeed in a multi-camera format: they invested quite a bit in promoting this show over the past two years, and they have also tried and tired again to find Will Arnett and Maya Rudolph some successful roles away from “Saturday Night Live” as they have with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Sadly, it just hasn’t worked out. The only real surprise to us is that Applegate’s announcement comes a few months after she worked with Michaels on an “SNL” episode, and it seemed as though she would embrace this major change.
At this point, we’re honestly not sure this show can continue. It will be hard to just write out Applegate’s role since she was central to just about everything, and re-casting it seems like a lot of effort for a show that was barely drawing more than a 1.0 rating in the demographic anyway.
Our guess? That all of this work revamping the series is just going to lead to it being canceled before a single episode is filmed.
Photo: NBC