Why Jennifer Love Hewitt's Kate Callahan Left Criminal Minds

"Life had other plans" is a line that applies very often in television regarding why actors choose to leave a successful and popular show on their own accord. Sometimes you have no choice if the creatives (showrunners, writers, or producers) decide to go in another direction story-wise and have your character written out permanently, while other times the mistreatment from crew and cast members force you to get out there as fast as possible — like in the case of Afton Williamson whose treatment was as gross and infuriating as it gets when she was on ABC's police procedural, "The Rookie."

Luckily, Jennifer Love Hewitt's exit from the long-running and beloved crime drama, "Criminal Minds," after one season was as sweet and amicable as possible. The "I Know What You Did Last Summer" actress played Katherine "Kate" Callahan, an experienced FBI agent, who joined the Behavioural Analyst Unit (BAU) in the show's tenth season and appeared for 23 episodes. The recurring part came many years after one of Hewitt's most popular television roles in "Ghost Whisperer," a supernatural drama she starred in for five seasons between 2005 and 2010. She left "Criminal Minds" due to very understandable and rather positive personal reasons in 2015.

Showrunner and executive producer Erica Messer had no intention to part ways with Hewitt's Kate Callahan. In fact, she said that they were having a "lot of fun with her." But once Hewitt found out she was pregnant, Messer completely understood that Hewitt wanted to be a full-time mom. In a 2015 interview with Entertainment Weekly, she spoke about how the decision was made, which also allowed them to have a beautiful, very true-to-life send-off. She said:

"She's [Hewitt] having another baby. Although on the show she hasn't had, physically, two babies, she does have two kids: She has Meg, who she's been raising since she was an infant, and we wrote in that the character is going to have another baby. There was an opportunity there to write towards the truth. Jennifer wanted to be able to give this second baby everything she gave her first, and that's taking time off to be a full-time mom. Because she's due in July, when we would start shooting season 11, timing-wise there was no way for her to do both, to be able to give that baby everything she wanted to and still be on our show."

This kind of "coincidence" perhaps happens more often in television than you think (life imitating art and vice versa), but it's something that's always nice to see when handled with such consideration and support as in the case of Jennifer Love Hewitt. "Criminal Minds" and its fans surely missed her in the following seasons, but her exit (and its cause) hasn't left any hard feelings.