Why is kyra sedgwick leaving

Five years is long time to be gone from prime time. Why so long? The show was so beloved and was getting nominated every year and it felt like a lot to live up to. Did you and do you like working in TV or were you looking more for movie roles?

I love working in television because it affords you episode after episode to explore character. In a film, you have an hour and a half, two hours, to show everybody a human being.

What gives? There are not a lot of great parts. Even though time and again we proved we can make money and get eyes to watch, they make more shows that are male-dominated, or male cast. This is a series transplant of major proportions. And as the last six Closer episodes begin airing this week, no one knows better than Duff, executive producer and creator of both The Closer and Major Crimes , how easy it would be to mess it all up.

For Sedgwick, the segue was a unique opportunity to avoid some serious guilt. As the show's title star, her decision to stop playing The Closer after seven years could have meant that Duff, her co-stars and the show's crew would have had to find other work. Then TNT kept the show going, allowing her to enjoy the farewells for a finely sculpted character without the bittersweet knowledge that her artistic decisions were costing other people their jobs.

And I feel like we avoided that; we did give her an honorable and interesting sendoff, and I feel like that was my job. She had the largest speaking role on television for a long time and that's hard. It's like running a marathon. He recalled a moment, while filming during the first season, when Sedgwick pulled him aside. Both had been working long hours and "were practically zombies" trying to finish everything. In seven years, The Closer has managed a remarkable feat.

It has offered a distinctive character who reinvented the female cop's image on TV while presenting a crime series popular enough to average more than 8 million viewers a night in its last airings. As the show returns Monday, Sedgwick's Johnson is still coping with fallout from the legal battle over her decision to leave a suspect in his home, knowing his fellow gang members planned to kill him.

In Monday's episode, old nemesis Philip Stroh, the lawyer and rapist who avoided justice in a previous episode, resurfaces to bedevil Johnson as her investigative hands are tied by a settlement. But one long-running question is finally answered: Who was that mole who kept leaking the Major Case Squad's inner workings to the lawyer suing Johnson? No, it's not who you think it is, and yes, it's based on a true story. We also see her face the possibility that her boss and former lover, Chief Will Pope, might not be so trustworthy.

And she must deal with a personal loss forcing her to confront how much of her life she has focused on work. A spinoff, Major Crimes , will continue the franchise. Sedgwick has now revealed that she made the choice to leave so that she could pursue other projects. Even though there's all this amazing character stuff, that's still what it is. I'm an artist, and I want to express myself in other ways and other places.