Why did Taye Diggs leave All American, Coach Billy Baker?
The biggest thing that we should point out here is rather important, for those who are not aware. This is not some super-controversial or sudden exit. Diggs has known for a while that he was ready to depart the series, and there have been conversations about the right way to have this happen ever since last season.
Speaking in a recent interview with TVLine on the subject, here is just some of what he had to say:
I was having a great time. It was just a feeling that I got [that I was ready to leave], and I just honored that feeling. It was maybe mid-fourth season. I don’t even remember, to be honest, because the showrunner [Nkechi Okoro Carroll] and myself are close. We’d been keeping in contact, so she had known, and we’d been talking. And we decided how to go about it, and storylines and whatnot, so it was all above board, and everyone was in the know.
So why did the writers have to kill Billy Baker off? We know it’s not something that a lot of people out there love, but it’s also probably the thing that makes the most sense for the character. They couldn’t just ship the coach off somewhere else, never to be seen or heard from again. That is so much the antithesis of who this guy has been over the course of the past several seasons. The departure needed to be true to the character, and we do think that Billy’s death will be transformational for a lot of characters. Spencer could need the most healing given the state of his relationship with Baker at the time of his death. It could take some time for him to deal with what happened, and we hope he gets some help from everyone who is close to him.
Related – When could the show be coming back following tonight’s installment?
Are you still sad that Taye Diggs has left All American and his all-important character?
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This article was written by Jessica BunBun.