Why Tracy Spiridakos' Hailey Upton Left Chicago P.D.

Like other long-running One Chicago shows, "Chicago P.D." has seen its share of cast changes over the years, especially when it comes to major characters. Intended main player Scott Eastwood left the franchise before his Officer Jim Barnes even had to appear on the police drama, only turning up in the two "Chicago Fire" episodes that served as a "Chicago P.D." backdoor pilot. Similarly, Sophia Bush's Erin Lindsay stepped away from "Chicago P.D." in 2017 after repeated bad experiences while filming the show, while Jesse Lee Soffer's Jay Halstead departed "Chicago P.D." in 2022 to explore other roles.

Then, in 2024, another "Chicago P.D." veteran left the series. After joining the show”s fourth season as Hailey Upton and becoming a franchise mainstay, Tracy Spiridakos chose to exit the show after "Chicago P.D." season 11. In a 2024 interview with NBC Insider, the actor explained that the reason behind her departure was similar to Soffer's, as she simply wished to look into other opportunities after so many seasons on the police drama:

"It was a really hard decision, and I don't know that there's ever a right time. I think I've been on the show for just over seven years, like seven and a half-ish years, and I was just wanting to switch it up and kind of see what else was out there. That was really it. I'm so close with everybody. With our producers, [EP/writer Gwen Sigan], our writers, our cast, our crew. It was a really difficult and emotional time, for sure."

Though her final "Chicago P.D." episode aired in the spring of 2024, by November of that year Tracy Spiridakos had already wrapped filming on writer-director Michael Marantz's indie thriller "After," where she stars opposite folks like Dónall Ó Héalai, Kevin Pollak, and Andy Richter. This, no doubt, won't be the last we hear of the Saturn Award-nominated actor, either.

Though this indicates that Spiridakos is clearly keeping her eyes in the ball, she certainly wasn't in a rush to leave "Chicago P.D." before making sure her character got the ending she deserved. Hailey Upton indeed exits the show in a highly cinematic fashion in the season 11 finale "More," rescuing his supervisor Henry Voight (Jason Beghe) from the season's main villain, Frank Matson (Dennis Flanagan), and ultimately choosing to leave Chicago in search of career opportunities in federal agencies. Spiridakos told NBC Insider that she had already decided to leave the series when season 10 ended, which allowed "Chicago P.D." to create a season-long departure arc that culminates in the tense finale with Voight and Matson:

"We got to see her kind of go through [it] all ... At the beginning, there's the absolute fear of what's gonna happen to Voight. And she lets that fear overtake her, loses her temper, and, you know, starts to feel like she's losing control. But then we get to see her kind of ground, come back down, and focus that attention and that energy with the team and to outsmart Matson ... We see at the end it's this really vulnerable and lovely scene with Voight. And [we] see her go in a happy kind of way, which I really liked."