Almost two decades have passed since he stopped being a regular member of the cast of NCISbut actress Sasha Alexander has spoken again about her departure from the long-running CBS procedural in her recent visit to the podcast dedicated to the series, Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatchled by the series’ former stars Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo.
Alexander joined the cast of the series starring Mark Harmon since its first season, in which she played Caitlin Todd, an important member of the team led by Gibbs who was precisely signed in the first episode after having had problems in her previous job. . The character of Caitlin Todd She played a fundamental role in the series during the first two seasons, but, at the end of the second, she was killed in a move that was as unexpected as it was poorly received by fans.
The death of Sasha Alexander’s character fell like a bucket of cold water on both the fans and the rest of the team members, who quickly looked to Donald P. Bellisario, creator and showrunner of the series. This, however, already pointed out from the first moment that the reason for Alexander’s departure was only due to the difficulties of the actress to fit the demands of the tight filming schedule.
“Do I regret leaving? Absolutely not, for a million reasons I’ve never talked about… for a million reasons. But I had a great time for two years,” he told Zap2It coinciding with the premiere of his new procedural series as protagonist, Rizzoli & Isles, in 2010, which he starred in for seven seasons.
A couple of years later, he clarified why: “People don’t realize that when you work on a cable network, you do 24 episodes a year. That’s 10 and a half months a year, 17 hours a day. It’s strong,” Alexander declared to TVGuide almost ten years after her departure, in 2012. “I firmly believe in my heart that I would not be where I am today – happily married, with two children, doing the creative things I want – if I had stayed.”
Now, the actress has confessed again to her former colleagues, highlighting that The demands of the series did not allow him to find the balance he needed between his personal and work life, something that until he reached NCIS It had never happened to him:
I think that before ‘NCIS’, the series I did somehow had more balance, as if they were real ensembles
“Normally if there are one or two [personajes]as Rizolli & Isles, you work all the time, but there were times when we could pass the buck to each other. In NCISMark, Michael and I, and you later [refiriéndose a Cote de Pablo] We were in every scene.”
According to the actress, her character had too constant a presence in the series and that did not allow her to establish any dynamic that would provide her with a little free time, so she decided to leave. Something she doesn’t regret.
Her departure was shocking, but without bad vibes: Sasha Alexander would return as a guest actress in two episodes of the third season and would do it again as ‘flashbacks’ on two more occasions.
