Tracy Spiridakos Reveals Why She's Leaving 'Chicago P.D.'
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Wednesday night’s Season 11 finale episode of Chicago P.D. will also be the finale for Tracy Spiridakos’ role as Haley Upton in the hit NBC cop drama.
Spiridakos had previously announced that she would be leaving the show, so that isn’t a surprise, but she finally revealed in an interview with Variety why she decided to say goodbye to Upton after playing her since Season 4.
“I decided at the end of my sixth season, which is when I had reached out to [showrunner] Gwen [Sigan] and to everyone at Wolf to let them know that I just wanted to do one more year,” she told the trade paper. “I wanted us to send out the character with one last season. It was a hard decision—very, very hard. I love everybody on the show—cast, crew, producers, writers, everybody. It’s such an incredible team. I was just curious what was out there for me and wanted to switch it up, and that was it.”
Related: Chicago P.D.'s Tracy Spiridakos Praises Jesse Lee Soffer in New Photo Ahead of Her Last Episode
Spiridakos will be going out with an intense, action-packed episode. The Season 11 finale finds Hank Voight (Jason Beghe)—Upton’s boss and father figure—a prisoner of the serial killer Frank Matson (Dennis Flanagan) and the Intelligence team knows it has a limited amount of time to find Voight before Matson will kill him.
Photo by: Lori Allen/NBC
“She goes through the emotion of feeling so scared of losing him and then focusing all of that fear and anxiety on the work to do everything she can to outsmart Matson as best she can,” Spiridakos told Variety. “The whole team is doing everything they can.”
In an interview with Parade, Sigan explained that she and her staff wanted to make sure that Upton’s goodbye episode was satisfying and fulfilling for the audience who has watched her all these years.
“We really wanted to get Upton to a place where she had to make a decision and make a choice that we haven’t seen her make before,” Sigan said. “I knew I wanted it to be this arc of she’s gone through so much, so much struggle, and she finally is in a place where she’s realizing, ‘Oh, this is why my brain’s doing what it’s doing.’ And so the big question is, ‘Okay, then what do you do about it? You know this now, but what do you do?’ And so that’s really what we wanted to craft and get her to this year.”
Photo by: Lori Allen/NBC
Related: Tracy Spiridakos and Marina Squerciati Are Bestie Goals In New Celebratory Selfies
While saying goodbye to Upton won't be easy, playing the role has been a growing experience for Spiridakos. In line with that, she told Variety that there are two qualities that her character possesses that she hopes have rubbed off on her and that she will be able to incorporate into her real life.
“One of my favorite things about her is her vulnerability, is her strength. For me, I’m not great at vulnerability. As an individual, I usually make awkward jokes. So that’s something that I really love about her—that and how she is so much herself. She doesn’t care if you love her or if you don’t. Those are the two qualities that I hope have rubbed off on me a little bit, particularly the vulnerability.”
The Chicago P.D. season 11 finale airs Wednesday night at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
