Tracy Spiradakos has spoken out about why she’ll no longer be playing the role of detective Haley Upton as Chicago P.D. wraps up Season 11. The actress first joined the procedural in Season 4.
In an interview with Variety, Spiridakos, revealed she decided to leave the show at the end of Season 10 but wanted to send the character off with one last season. She went to showrunner Gwen Sigan with this “hard decision.”
“I decided at the end of my sixth season, which is when I had reached out to Gwen and to everyone at Wolf to let them know that I just wanted to do one more year. I wanted us to send out the character with one last season,” Spiridakos said. “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.”
Spiridakos says that scenes in the May 22 finale are particularly “intense” and “vulnerable.”
“I don’t think anyone sits down the whole episode,” she shared. “There’s a lot of really vulnerable moments. We see these characters, who we haven’t necessarily seen be so vulnerable, you see a lot of that come through as well.”
The 36-year-old actress, who has appeared in over 140 episodes of Chicago P.D., shared that it is her character’s vulnerability that she loves the most. She hopes the quality “rubbed off” on her.
“For me, I’m not great at vulnerability. As an individual, I usually make awkward jokes,” she said. “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.”
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The Season 11 finale will be the last time viewers will see Haley. The episode picks up from the last as the police squad searches for Voight (Jason Beghe), who was kidnapped by serial killer Frank Matson (Dennis Flanagan). Haley will do whatever it takes to outwit the kidnapper before he tortures Voight to death.
“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,” she teases. “The whole team is doing everything they can.”
The last episode, the 13th of the season, airs on Wednesday, May 22 and is titled “More.” Chicago P.D. is produced by Wolf Entertainment and Universal Television.
Chicago P.D. Season 11 Finale, Wednesday, May 22, 10/9c, NBC
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