A few months before Chicago Med—the second spinoff from Dick Wolf’s Chicago Fire—is set to premiere, star Laurie Holden (The Walking Dead) has decided to leave the show. That comes from Deadline, which quotes Holden as saying the decision to leave was “for family reasons,” and that she thinks the show will be “a huge success.” NBC backs up her story, so it doesn’t sound like there’s any secret drama going on here; a spokesman says that she chose “to opt out of the series.”
Holden was cast back in February as troubled ER surgeon Dr. Hannah Tramble, and she made her first appearance in the Dick Wolf-iverse in an episode of Chicago Fire in April. Surely, Tramble’s troubles would’ve been a very lucrative source of drama for Med (and a good title for her own spinoff series), but NBC says it’s not going to replace Holden with a different actor. Instead, it will introduce three new characters: “an emergency pediatrician, a charge nurse, and a young first-year resident.” Presumably, each of these characters will bring a third of the troubles that Tramble would’ve brought, so it’ll all even out in the end.