Tracy Spiridakos is saying goodbye to Hailey Upton. Ahead of the May 22 finale, the “Chicago P.D.” actor is opening up for the first time about her decision to leave the procedural at the end of Season 11.
In an exclusive interview with Variety, Spiridakos, who joined the Dick Wolf police drama in Season 4, reveals she went to showrunner Gwen Sigan at the end of Season 10 to share that she wanted the next season to be her last.
“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 says. “It was a hard decision — very, very hard. 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.”
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Spiridakos, who will have appeared on 140 episodes of “Chicago P.D.” after the finale, says there are two qualities that Upton has that she hopes she can take with her when she goes.
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“One of my favorite things about her is her vulnerability is her strength. For me, I’m not great at vulnerability. As an individual, I usually make awkward jokes,” she says. “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.”
For now, there’s one more episode for viewers to see Hailey. The finale will pick up where the penultimate left off, with the squad frantically searching for Voight (Jason Beghe), who was kidnapped by serial killer Frank Matson (Dennis Flanagan). Since Voight is her closest confidant, Hailey will do everything in her power to find him.
“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 “intense” finale is extremely fast-paced, Spiridakos says. “I don’t think anyone sits down the whole episode… 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.”
“Chicago P.D.” is produced by Wolf Entertainment and Universal Television. The season finale airs on NBC on Wednesday, May 22, at 10 p.m. ET.
