Chicago P.D. fans be warned—one of your favorite characters is leaving the show.
Tracy Spiridakos, who plays Hailey Upton, will leave after Season 11, according to a Variety report citing “multiple sources.”
An NBC representative confirmed to Newsweek that the report from Variety is accurate.
The NBC drama’s 11th season has been delayed by the writers’ and actors’ strikes in Hollywood, but it could air next year. It is not known how many episodes Spiridakos will appear in.
Spiridakos, 35, joined the police drama in Season 4 as a former robbery-homicide detective who joins the department’s Intelligence Unit. She became a series regular in Season 5 and has appeared in 127 episodes. Her character has also appeared in its sister shows Chicago Med, Chicago Fire and FBI.
Reports of Spiridakos’ departure comes just a year after Jesse Lee Soffer, who played her on-screen husband Jay Halstead, left his role.
Soffer first appeared as Halstead in the second season of Chicago Fire, which led to the spin-offs Chicago P.D. and later Chicago Med. The three shows make up the “One Chicago” world on NBC.
He has appeared in all 10 seasons of Chicago P.D. In Season 10 his character left for an army assignment in Bolivia and opted to extend his trip instead of coming back to his wife. His final episode aired in October 2022.
However, there is a chance that Soffer could return for a cameo before Spiridakos departs. He shared a heartfelt message with fans after his exit and told Variety in an interview that the door “definitely isn’t” closed.
“Never say never. I feel so bad for the fans that are like, ‘Is he going to come back?’ ‘What’s he going to do?’ ‘What’s going on with him and Hailey?” he said.
“I like to think—and I hope the fans think this too—that he’s just in another country right now, doing what he does best and making the world a safer place. In a family, sometimes somebody moves away or goes to college somewhere else. I still love it. I still love the fans. And I still love Halstead. Halstead’s always going to be in my blood. That’s never going to change.”
When Spiridakos’ Upton was introduced, she and Soffer’s Halstead were professional partners before realizing they had romantic feelings for each other. They officially became a couple in the show’s eighth season and married in Season 9, with their police department colleagues finding out later. Upton and Halstead are known to fans by the portmanteau “Upstead.”
Update 10/27/23, 2:27 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from NBC.
