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<p>As you’ll see in the photo gallery below, sometimes there’s more drama going on behind the scenes of our favorite soaps than there is on screen. In investigating the real reasons that more than 100 actors exited stage left, we came across a case of a leading man who saw red over the way that his character was being run into the ground, a fan favorite whose headwriter was not among her admirers, and an MVP who alleges that she was fired for blowing the whistle about on-set harassment. Keep scrolling to find out why stars from <em>The Young and the Restless</em>, <em>The Bold and the Beautiful</em>, <em>General Hospital</em>, <em>Days of Our Lives</em> and more called it quits.</p>
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<p>During <em>Days of Our Lives</em>‘ 2023 probe into allegations of misconduct on the part of executive producer Albert Alarr, Zucker was outspoken about the treatment that she and other actresses endured on the set. “As weeks went on, my agents received an E-mail with a reduction in pay…[then] a second request for a reduction in pay,” she said, discussing her <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/days-of-our-lives/news/717227/read-arianne-zucker-statement-lawsuit/" target="_blank">sexual-harassment lawsuit</a> against the show in 2024. “While waiting for the results of the investigation, my character was being written off the show.” <em>Days of Our Lives</em> has countered that Zucker was <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/days-of-our-lives/news/717111/arianne-zucker-lawsuit-response/" target="_blank">offered a new contract</a> as well as a raise to continue on as Nicole Walker. But as of this writing, no deal has been struck, and her lawsuit remains ongoing.</p>
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<p>When <em>General Hospital</em> sent the Emmy winner overboard as Spencer Cassadine in early 2024, it was with the understanding that he would return to his role once filming was completed on Season 2 of Ryan Murphy’s <em>Monster</em> (in which he’d been cast as half of the infamous Menendez brothers). But after production on the series wrapped, Spencer didn’t bob to the surface as we all expected. How come? Apparently, opportunity had knocked. When Chavez broke his silence on the subject of his soap status in May 2024, he confirmed that there were <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/general-hospital/comings-and-goings/727335/nicholas-chavez-not-returning-as-spencer/" target="_blank">no immediate comeback plans</a>, adding, “I wouldn’t be as busy as I am professionally if it weren’t for the talented producers, writers, directors and fellow actors” on the show.</p>
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<p>Being a recast is hard. Being a recast for a popular actress who’s been around for decades, damn near impossible. But the <em>Days of Our Lives</em> vet, who’d already succeeded Lisa Rinna as Billie Reed, managed to win over fans of <em>The Bold and the Beautiful</em> as well as Hunter Tylo. So Allen was as shocked as viewers when she was let go as Taylor Hayes in 2023. “The craziest thing,” she said, “is right before I got dropped, I did the cast photo shoot, and then the next week, they called and said, ‘We’re not going to keep [you on through the third year of your contract] and… <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-bold-and-the-beautiful/comings-and-goings/695594/krista-allen-leaving-taylor/" target="_blank">thank you, goodbye</a>. I was like, ‘What?’ The show just said that my character wasn’t really needed.”</p>
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<p>You might think that whatever <em>Young & Restless</em>’ Victor Newman wants, he gets. But that certainly wasn’t the case in 2009. Hammering out a new contract with the powers that be, “we <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/5541/the-young-and-the-restless-eric-braeden-contract-s/" target="_blank">reached an impasse</a> in the negotiations,” the Emmy winner said. “I have shown flexibility, they have shown none. It is over. I pulled the plug. That’s it. No more. If I show good will, I expect it to be reciprocated. If there is a rigid attitude on the other side, what is there to to negotiate? That’s a sign of utter disrespect. I will not negotiate with people who remain aloof and arrogant about the whole thing. Not after 30 years, I won’t do that.” As you well know, in the end, this — whew! — was not the end of the chess game that Braeden was playing as The Black Night.</p>
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<p>Never mess with a diva. So <em>As the World Turns</em> learned the hard way in 1983 during a contract dispute with the soap superstar who played bitchy Lisa Miller. Fulton went so far as to leave her role, necessitating that a recast (Betsy von Furstenberg) to brought in as a seat-filler until a new deal was hammered out early the following year.</p>
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<p>For nearly 20 years, the veteran of many small-screen Westerns in the 1950s and ’60s rode tall as <em>One Life to Live</em>’s Clint Buchanan. But in 1998, Ritchie retired, telling fans on <a href="https://clintritchie.com/conversations/ask-clint-winter-1998-99/" target="_blank">his website</a> that his contract “negotiations were almost nonexistent.” He’d already been thinking of leaving, he added. “That’s because of the way they were writing the character and the show.” In his estimation, the powers that be had “trashed Clint and the whole family…They don’t have any respect for the viewers. It doesn’t make any sense.”</p>
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<p><em>Days of Our Lives</em> only killed off Abigail DiMera in the summer of 2022 because her portrayer was unable to commit. As headwriter Ron Carlivati explained to <a href="http://soapoperadigest.com" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a>, “Marci was not going to be available to us full-time on contract, and it made it challenging to tell story for Chad and Abigail… That always becomes a problem when one half of a couple is not going to be available to you.”</p>
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<p>The <em>Dynasty</em> vet had no intention of leaving his <em>All My Children</em> role of Dimitri Marick. But after he was arrested in 2001 for attempting to <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/gallery/real-life-soap-scandals-photos/dynasty-dex-nader-abc/" target="_blank">sell co*ke</a> to an undercover police officer, ABC dismissed him, saying that he could reprise his role if he was able to resolve his issues. But he did not play Erica Kane’s ex again until a dozen years later, by which point the soap had, however briefly, moved online.</p>
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<p>In 2018, <em>Young & Restless</em> fans feared that they’d seen the last of the Emmy winner as a regular cast member. “Time for a little more <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/51054/eileen-davidson-leaving-yr/" target="_blank">control over my day-to-day</a>!” she said as she dropped to recurring status on the show. But our worries proved unfounded, and before we knew it, she and alter ego Ashley Abbott were back in the thick of things.</p>
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<p>Never let it be said that the eight-time Emmy winner didn’t know when to say when. In 2015, the <em>General Hospital</em> legend decided to pack it in after 44 years off and on as Luke Spencer (and lookalike cousin Bill Eckert). “I’m just weary of the grind and have been for 20 years,” he told <a href="https://tvline.com/2015/05/08/general-hospital-anthony-geary-leaving-luke/" target="_blank">TV Insider</a> at the time. “I really don’t want to die, collapsing in a heap, on that <em>General Hospital</em> set one day. That wouldn’t be too poetic.” True — although it would’ve made for one hell of a memorable exit.</p>
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<p>Following her last extended stay in <em>Days of Our Lives</em>’ Salem, Sweeney said that sure, she’d return again as Sami Brady, the scheme queen whose crown she first put on in 1993. But for the long haul? “No, <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/days-of-our-lives/comings-and-goings/621771/days-of-our-lives-alison-sweeney-not-coming-back-as-sami-full-time/" target="_blank">full-time is not the plan</a> for me,” she said. What could be more fun than wreaking havoc on the soap? “I produce and develop content for Hallmark and other streaming services,” Sweeney said. “I love getting to do my own projects.”</p>
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<p>In the end, it would all turn out to have been a bad dream. But <em>Dallas</em> fans were nonetheless wrecked when OG cast member Duffy’s Bobby Ewing was killed off at the wrap of Season 8. “I left because I had done the show for seven years,” the actor told <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/patrick-duffy_b_5774444" target="_blank">Huff Post</a> in 2014. “My contract was for seven years. It was obviously an ensemble show, and I thought if it was ever a time at the height of the popularity of that show that I might be able to launch into something that was more of a single, starring venue, that that would be the time to do it…That did not happen — typical Patrick Duffy business-decision fiasco.”</p>
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<p><em>Guiding Light</em> shone a little bit less brightly after Cassie Layne’s portrayer announced in 2005 that she was shuffling off to Buffalo, so to speak. What prompted her to leave after eight years — and right when her stripper-turned-princess character was on the verge of a romance with sis Reva Shayne’s true love, Josh Lewis? It wasn’t “pay cuts” or “because of any kind of drama,” she <a href="https://www.soapcentral.com/guiding-light/news/2005/0912-wright.php" target="_blank">assured fans</a> on her website. “I want to try another part as an actor.” And what a part it is, too. Ever since, the Emmy winner has been rocking the role of <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/gallery/general-hospital-carly-corinthos-timeline-laura-wright-photos-through-the-years/" target="_blank">Carly Spencer</a> on <em>General Hospital.</em></p>
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<p>With <em>Young & Restless</em> leading lady Amelia Heinle, the soap-hopper had created that rarest of rarities — a bonafide soap supercouple in “Ashtoria.” But just after New Year 2022, the news broke that he had been let go. WTH happened? “I naively and inadvertently <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/620149/young-restless-why-was-richard-burgi-fired-reason-covid-protocols/" target="_blank">violated the show’s COVID policy</a>,” he explained. “I felt terrible about it. I still do. It bothers me mightily, but it is what it is.” Nevertheless, the class act expressed his well wishes for both the show and his successor, <em>Guiding Light</em> vet Robert Newman (Josh).</p>
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<p>The three-time Emmy winner left <em>All My Children</em> several times over the course of her 1988-2013 tenure as beleaguered heroine Dixie Cooney. But her 2007 exit was particularly memorable — and most definitely not the beloved actress’ choice. She explained on X that she had asked a writer “for a scene where Tad and Dixie take their kids aside to make sure they know that their dad killing someone was wrong. I thought this would be OK. Turns out it was a bad day for an ‘ask’!” The writer turned around and had her character served poisoned pancakes by the Satin Slayer. They “very much wanted to put me in my place,” McClain told <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/soaps/news/621577/all-my-children-cady-mcclain-explains-dixie-death-poison-pancake-anniversary/" target="_blank"><em>Entertainment Weekly</em></a>. “I had stepped out of line, and they wanted to put me back in line.” And poor Dixie, in the grave!</p>
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<p>The circ*mstances surrounding this Emmy winner’s 1997 exit from <em>Guiding Light</em> are particularly upsetting. Though he’d created one of the soap’s most enduring villains, Roger Thorpe, the powers that be pink-slipped him when symptoms of Lou Gehrig’s disease began to manifest on camera. An exec for Procter & Gamble, which produced the show, was even quoted in <a href="https://www.welovesoaps.net/2011/09/25blunders.html" target="_blank"><em>TV Guide</em></a> as having said, “Roger is a powerful, active, sexual, multicolored villain. That’s who we need him to be… We do not need a wizened little old man. And that’s what [Zaslow] would have to play in his condition.” To the horror of fans, <em>Guiding Light</em> recast the role with soap vet Dennis Parlato. Zaslow filed a lawsuit and was invited back to <em>One Life to Live</em>, where his ALS was written into his storyline as Dorian Lord’s ex, David Renaldi. He died the following year.</p>
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<p>Shortly after announcing that she had left <em>Days of our Lives</em>, where she’d played Hope Brady for nearly 40 years, the veteran actress revealed why: The powers that be wanted her to <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/days-of-our-lives/news/573671/kristian-alfonso-not-retiring-days-of-our-lives-hope/" target="_blank">sit out four or five months</a> before starting a new storyline in which Hope got involved with a Navy SEAL. The show’s top scribe, she suggested to <em>Access Hollywood</em>, “didn’t want to write it. I don’t know what his reasons are.” She later reprised her role on spinoff <em>Beyond Salem</em> and also on the mother ship.</p>
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<p><em>General Hospital</em> viewers were shocked when the fan favorite was killed off as Julian Jerome in 2020. But the actor himself? Not so much. After seven years as the back-from-the-dead mobster, “I personally could feel it coming on in September of 2019,” he told the <a href="https://torontosun.com/entertainment/television/exclusive-william-devry-sounds-off-on-his-shocking-gh-exit" target="_blank"><em>Toronto Sun</em></a>. “I didn’t see a big investment in the character. At that point, I just felt I should prepare myself for not being re-signed. I had always told [executive producer] Frank Valentini to not string me along once they knew I’d be gone. And to his credit, he did let me know.”</p>
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<p>From 1964-75, the leading lady and frontburner mainstay amassed a large fan following as beleaguered <em>Another World</em> heroine Alice Frame. Unfortunately, the NBC soap’s headwriter was <em>not</em> among her admirers. In his memoir <em>Eight Years in Another World</em>, the late, great Harding “Pete” Lemay recalled being particularly horrified that she’d once “turned what was written as muted, catatonic grief into a histrionic display more fitting to a 19th-century madhouse.” Finally, she was fired and replaced with, in the scribe’s estimation, “a far better actress.”</p>
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<p>The Emmy winner loved his time at <em>The Young and the Restless</em> as Malcolm Winters; it began his acting career, for Pete’s sake! But in a <a href="https://www.soapcentral.com/yr/news/2001/1231-moore.php" target="_blank">SoapCentral</a> interview in 2000, he admitted that “I’ve done a lot of soul-searching. I really had to look at my career and my future.” Finally, he took his agents’ advice and took a leap of faith that has paid off handsomely: Since leaving Genoa City, Moore has become a primetime mainstay; he currently headlines his own series, CBS’ reboot of <em>S.W.A.T.</em></p>
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<p>Despite slaying as Delia Coleridge, the go-to bad girl of <em>Ryan’s Hope</em>, the original cast member was fired in 1983 for gaining weight. “I had taken cortisone for a skin infection,” she told <a href="https://ryansbaronline.tripod.com/kristensod87.html" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a> in ’87. “The doctor screwed up the prescription, and I blew up. It caused me three years of absolute torture. My system was so out of whack, and [the powers that be] were very intolerant of it… They wanted glitz, glitz, glitz, glitz… and it wasn’t particularly what I was physically capable of doing.”</p>
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<p>Despite his legacy character being recast and re-recast, the <em>Passions</em> alum had altogether made the role of <em>The Young and the Restless</em>’ Adam Newman his own after just two years in Genoa City. Time to settle in and… What? Nooo! Yes, that was when Hartley left the daytime drama — and daytime. “Although I am saying goodbye to <em>Young & Restless</em>, this is not a goodbye letter,” he Facebooked. “You haven’t gotten rid of me. I’m beyond thrilled and proud of my new series, <em>This Is Us</em>,” which went on to run for six acclaimed seasons.</p>
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<p>The second time was the charm for Jones, who first appeared on <em>Days of Our Lives</em> in 1982 as Nikki Wade. When 11 years later she landed role No. 2 —surprise DiMera Lexie Carver — the job lasted for nearly two decades…and might still be going strong today, had she not decided to quit acting. “I finally had to stop and ask myself, ‘What <em>really</em> makes me happy?’” she told <a href="https://www.tvguide.com/news/renee-jones-quits-days-of-our-lives-1045529/" target="_blank"><em>TV Guide</em></a> in 2012. “And it’s not acting. I just don’t want to do this anymore. [It] now feels like a chore, and I need a break —maybe for a good, long time, maybe forever.”</p>
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<p>At first, the actor loved <em>One Life to Live</em> and his co*cksure character, Max Holden. But over and over again, executive producer and headwriter changes resulted in Llanview’s foremost playboy becoming a watered-down version of himself. “There was one point,” he <a href="https://marlenadelacroix.com/2009/05/a-soap-shrink-interview-james-depaivas-ultra-candid-look-back-at-one-life-to-live-and-his-own-life-2/" target="_blank">recalled in 2009</a>, “where they said, ‘We’ll just make him a father [and] have him walk around with kids strapped to his chest.’ That just didn’t work for me. At a certain point, I said that if you put out the breakdown for what this character is, I would not attend an audition for it.” By the time the fan favorite left, it hardly felt like it was Max that he was leaving. “They did absolutely everything they could to diminish the value of the character.”</p>
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<p>By Season 4, <em>Dynasty</em> was must-see TV. But to Martin, it was more must-<em>flee</em>. In 2006, <em>USA Today</em> reported that she “she left [the primetime soap] and acting when she felt her ‘glib’ character…had been reduced to a victim.” Following her departure, the role of spitfire Fallon Carrington was recast with <em>General Hospital</em> alum Emma Samms, who’d already done the impossible and succeeded as a new, post-Genie Francis love interest for Anthony Geary.</p>
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<p><em>The Young and the Restless</em>’ original Jack Abbott made no bones about the fact that he walked in 1989 over his dissatisfaction with the amount of airtime being given to a green rookie: Lauralee Bell (Christine), who just happened to be the daughter of the show’s creators. She didn’t hold it against him, though. And, she told the <a href="https://www.welovesoaps.net/2009/06/flashback-bell-responds-to-lester-1989.html" target="_blank"><em>Daily News of Los Angeles</em></a>, “if he ever took it out on me, he was sorry.”</p>
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<p><em>Guiding Light</em> fans were horrified when Reva Shayne appeared to plunge to her death in 1989 — and, soon after, so was her Emmy-winning portrayer, who assumed that mainstream stardom awaited. “It was a real shock when we got to L.A. I thought I was going to kick butt,” she told the <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/1995/03/24/guiding-light-brings-back-kim-zimmer-as-reva/" target="_blank"><em>Chicago Tribune</em></a> upon returning to her iconic role. “I had come off such a successful run on the soap. I thought they would hand me jobs on a silver platter. In this business, it’s so easy to believe your press. Then you discover they’ve never heard of you, and they treat you like you’re the lowest scum.”</p>
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<p>The first actress to play a grownup Hope Logan on <em>Bold & Beautiful</em> left after six years to pursue other opportunities — and boy, did they come her way. Matula took primetime by storm, landing series-regular roles on <em>UnReal</em> and <em>LA to Vegas</em>, making TV movies galore and winning the plum part of Jane Curtin in the feature film about the origins of <em>Saturday Night Live</em>. “Because <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-bold-and-the-beautiful/news/654028/bold-beautiful-will-kim-matula-return-hope-soaps/" target="_blank">I played Hope</a>, I have a soft spot for her,” she told Soaps.com in 2023. “But so often, I wanted to shake her and just be like, ‘You need to get it together, girl! Get over this man who treats you like garbage!’” (Lookin’ at you, Liam!)</p>
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<p>The daytime icon has no problem playing complicated characters. But she drew a line in the sand in 1989 when <em>Santa Barbara</em> had her character, volatile Augusta Lockridge, start lusting after Dash Nichols —her sister Julia Wainwright’s rapist. “It didn’t make any sense,” <a href="http://santabarbara-online.com/article2LSorel2.htm#:~:text=%22When%20I%20was%20proposed%20a,in%20Days%20of%20our%20Lives." target="_blank">she said</a>, “since Augusta was very close to her sister and wouldn’t have acted like that.” Months would pass before Sorel would agree to return to the show.</p>
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<p>It wasn’t really that car crash that was responsible for the death of <em>Grey’s Anatomy</em>’s Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd in Season 11. Former executive producer James D. Parriott divulged in <em>How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy</em> that “there were HR issues” with Dempsey. “It wasn’t sexual in any way. He sort of was terrorizing the set. Some cast members had all sorts of PTSD with him. He had this hold on the set where he knew he could stop production and scare people. The network and studio came down, and we had sessions with them.” Parriott added that the leading man and series creator Shonda Rhimes “were at each other’s throats,” too. That never helps.</p>
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<p>Five years into her run as Belle Black on <em>Days of Our Lives</em>, the former child star had transformed John and Marlena’s daughter into one of the show’s most beloved heroines. But when opportunity knocked, she had to open the door and try out for Aaron Spelling’s CBS drama <em>Clubhouse</em>. When not only was Storms cast but the show ordered to series, “I ended up leaving <em>Days</em> to do that,” she told <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/lu/podcast/ghs-kristen-storms-maxie-reflects-on-acting-journey/id1363246942?i=1000509859390" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a> in 2022. <em>Clubhouse</em> lasted just 11 episodes, but soon after, <em>General Hospital</em> approached Storms about moving to Port Charles as a SORAS’d Maxie Jones.</p>
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<p>After three years on <em>General Hospital</em>, the now-veteran actor was such a hot commodity as Scotty Baldwin that he was poached to star on NBC’s <em>Another World</em> spinoff, <em>Texas</em>. “I knew [that it was a] giant blunder,” <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/general-hospital/news/692784/kin-shriner-leaving/" target="_blank">he admitted</a> on social media in 2023. But New York City, where the show taped, “was the scene, so I jumped” at the chance. Even though the gig “was lucrative,” he added, it was “still a mistake” to leave Scotty behind to play Jeb (yes, <em>Jeb</em>!) Hampton.</p>
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<p>We couldn’t blame <em>The Young and the Restless</em> for recruiting the <em>All My Children</em> MVP in 2010. But the show might have wanted to think twice about the character that it assigned her. Heather Stevens, the Emmy winner told Soaps.com, “had a lot of baggage because she was kind of a <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/618646/young-restless-eden-riegel-why-she-quit-playing-heather-stevens/" target="_blank">vixen and a cheater</a>. Those are not personality traits that I’m extremely comfortable playing, and I think people watching the show could tell.” Riegel had understood her Pine Valley counterpart Bianca Montgomery completely. Heather, on the other hand… “We didn’t quite mesh.” A year later, both Riegel and Heather had left Genoa City.</p>
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<p>The <em>Another World</em> leading man had attracted such a devoted following in his 1985-99 run as Jake McKinnon that when NBC cancelled the soap, Procter & Gamble crossed over both the actor and his rakish character to <em>As the World Turns.</em> But after three years in Oakdale, he was run out of town for what were said to be “storyline-dictated” reasons. Eplin’s last role, per IMDb, was in the 2007 zombie flick <em>Days of Darkness.</em></p>
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<p>Although the late actress had helped make <em>Beverly Hills, 90210</em> a smash in the 1990s, she was given the chop ahead of Season 5. In 2024, she set the record straight on her podcast. In a “really horrible marriage” back then to <em>Sunset Beach</em> actor Ashley Hamilton, Doherty said, “things were transpiring… that made it really hard to consistently be on time for work.” She understood that it “became a very big problem” for her castmates but wished “that I had been sort of sat down [and told], ‘Listen, the end result is going to be… you are going to get fired, because none of us are willing to put up with it anymore.”</p>
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<p>Over the course of her original 1996-2001 run as the original Carly Spencer on <em>General Hospital</em>, Brown won three Daytime Emmys, amassed a legion of fans and all but electrified the show. And “I could have very easily stayed and done Carly for 25 years,” she said in a 2021 Instagram Q&A, “but it just wasn’t my dream. I wanted to go out and do other things, and I’m really glad that I did, to be honest with you. I got to do a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t otherwise.”</p>
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<p>Considering the career that awaited the future <em>Ozark</em> star, no one could blame the two-time Emmy winner for wanting to capitalize on the big break that <em>Guiding Light</em> had given him when it cast the newcomer as Reva Shayne’s embittered son, Jonathan Randall. In 2020, he told <a href="https://collider.com/tom-pelphrey-ozark-interview/" target="_blank">Collider</a> that the soap “was a great first job” out of college. “I learned a lot, then I left and have been working my way up ever since then.”</p>
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<p>After 13 years as <em>The Young and the Restless</em>’ Victoria Newman, the then-two-time Emmy winner walked in 2003 over “creative differences” with then-executive producer David Shaughnessy, <a href="https://www.soapcentral.com/young-and-restless/news/2003/0929-tom.php" target="_blank">SoapCentral</a> reported. Even before she had last aired on the CBS soap, she’d already made her debut as <em>One Life to Live</em>’s new Kelly Cramer. Now, of course, Tom is back on the West Coast and back on CBS, playing Katie Logan on <em>Young & Restless</em>’ sister soap, <em>The Bold and the Beautiful.</em></p>
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<p>The Emmy winner didn’t mince words when explaining why he’d quit <em>Days of our Lives</em> in 2020 after nearly a decade as Eric Brady. Storylines that were promised him, he told <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/days-of-our-lives/news/574649/greg-vaughan-why-quit-days-of-our-lives-extra/" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a>, “never came to fruition. I didn’t feel like all of the things that were being told to me were being delivered.” As a result, he wound up feeling “like a glorified extra in everybody else’s storyline.” Vaughan returned to the show two years later.</p>
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<p>Two years, two Daytime Emmys, and that was it. Lanier called it quits as <em>General Hospital</em> villainess Nelle Benson when her contract expired in 2018. “I’m young, and I feel like I want to challenge myself in other ways,” she told <a href="https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/exclusive-chloe-lanier-reveals-why-she-left-gh/" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a>, “and play other characters and possibly produce my own material.”</p>
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<p>That was no way to treat a genuine star. After the Emmy winner was lured back to <em>All My Children</em> in 1995 to reprise her role of Liza Colby, she spent years on the frontburner, both as a foil for supercouple Tad and Dixie Martin and a love interest for prickly Adam Chandler. But by 2004, the fan favorite’s screentime had shrunk to the point that you had to squint to even see it. She agreed to drop to recurring status, but then not just one but two other shoes dropped: First, then-headwriter Megan McTavish hinted that nah, Walker wouldn’t be getting a new storyline anytime soon. Then, her role was recast with <em>Melrose Place</em> alum Jamie Luner, who was so wrong for the part, viewers had to pretend that “Liza” was a whole different character.</p>
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<p>After originating the role of <em>As the World Turns</em>’ conniving Craig Montgomery in 1982, the veteran actor played the part on and off until ’94. In the years that followed, the role was recast twice before Bryce returned in 2007… only to be fired. “I’ve had dozens of relationships with executive producers and this one, with Chris Goutman, was odd and very disconnected,” he told <em>TV Guide</em> at the time. “I think we had a different vision of who Craig is…Chris would say to me, ‘This is your character, run with it.’ But when I did, he never seemed pleased.” Ultimately, Jon Lindstrom, between stints as Kevin Collins on <em>General Hospital</em>, took over as Craig and held the role until the soap’s 2010 cancellation.</p>
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<p>Thankfully, the Emmy winner still visits <em>General Hospital</em> as Robin Scorpio, the beloved heroine she’s played since she was 7 years old. But in 2011, after nearly three decades in Port Charles, McCullough hung up the doctor’s lab coat to pursue a (now-thriving) <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/general-hospital/news/21373/kimberly-mccullough-leaving-general-hospital/" target="_blank">career as a director</a>. When fans expressed their sadness, she admitted, “I am heartbroken as well to leave Robin, a character that is a huge part of myself and my life…[But] I feel like it’s the right time to pursue my dream.”</p>
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<p>Depending on whom you believe, the <em>Yellowstone</em> star was let go ahead of filming for the back half of the Paramount Network hit’s fifth and final season because of (a) scheduling conflicts as he worked on his feature <em>Horizon: An American Saga</em> or (b) demands for script approval that no way was series co-creator Taylor Sheridan going to grant. Before Costner announced that he really was done as John Dutton, he told <em>GQ</em> that Sheridan and “I know what the conditions are for coming back, and I’ll just keep that between ourselves.”</p>
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<p>The future movie star was an insta-sensation as ingenue Allison MacKenzie when <em>Peyton Place</em> debuted in 1964. But her eventual husband, older man Frank Sinatra, pushed her to quit the show —which she did two years later, sending the primetime soap into a tailspin from which it never truly recovered.</p>
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<p>Twice, the Emmy winner took <em>Bold & Beautiful</em> by storm —from 1997-99 and from 2011-18. But when he was dropped to recurring status as playboy Rick Forrester, he took it as a sign to move on, citing as one of the reasons the soap’s “<a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-bold-and-the-beautiful/comings-and-goings/719036/what-is-jacob-young-doing-now/" target="_blank">hyper-focus</a> on a couple of storylines at a time… There’s just not enough work to go around.”</p>
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<p>They say that timing is everything, but in the case of this fan favorite, it might have been more like…<em>time</em> is everything. When Konefal left <em>Days of Our Lives</em> in 2022, then-headwriter Ron Carlivati explained that “she really just <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/days-of-our-lives/comings-and-goings/623232/days-of-our-lives-victoria-konefal-exits-ciara-sails-montreal-ben/" target="_blank">wasn’t available</a> on a regular basis, and in the way our show works and how you have to schedule people, it just became less feasible to keep her in that status.” So Ciara Brady got her happy ending with true love Ben Weston, and his portrayer, Robert Scott Wilson, got a new role in Alex Kiriakis.</p>
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<p>After four years as Sonny Corinthos on <em>General Hospital</em>, the future Emmy winner walked when his contract expired. Considering that the mobster is the role for which he will always be best known, what motivated him to leave behind the godfather of Port Charles? “I just wanted a break,” he told <em>Soap Opera Update</em> in 1997. Beyond that, “The writing hadn’t been to my pleasing for a while, and it wasn’t really changing.” Benard admitted that, without a steady gig, “There’s always the fear of going broke and not working. If that happens, you deal with it.” The actor returned to <em>General Hospital</em> for two-month arc in the summer of ’98 and full-time less than six months after that.</p>
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<p>Unhappy with her work environment and the storyline that was being written for <em>Guiding Light</em>’s Alexandra Spaulding, the daytime legend took her annual eight-week vacation in 1992 — and never returned, thanks to an out in her contract. In an interview with <em>TV Guide</em>, she recalled that “somebody said, ‘Maybe Beverlee’s not familiar with the contract.’ Well, of course she was — she wrote it, you bozos!”</p>
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<p><em>The Young and the Restless</em> actor, who’d played Cane Ashby for more than a decade, was as “shocked and gutted” as his fans to announce that he’d been let go in the fall of 2019. “But sadly, it seems that <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/comings-and-goings/539026/daniel-goddard-leaving-yr/" target="_blank">without Neil and Lily</a>, there just is no Cane.” But wait, Lily’s back now…could that possibly mean what we hope that it does? Click here for the juicy details of <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/574800/young-restless-cane-returning-keep-billy-lily-apart/" target="_blank">the story we have in mind</a>!</p>
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<p>Although the actress had literally grown up before our eyes as Jessica Buchanan on <em>One Life to Live</em>, she decided in 2002 to call it a day after 13 years in Llanview. Her intention? To focus on other areas of her life, in particular her family and her singing. She married seven years later and now has two children. If you subscribe to Spotify, you can lend an ear to her 2007 album, <em>Part of the Plan</em>.</p>
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<p>The soap-hopper has gone on to an illustrious career in daytime (that includes multiple roles on <em>General Hospital</em> alone). But his first gig as <em>Days of Our Lives</em>’ Tanner Scofield in the early 1990s was a breathrough that ended in a breakup. “I got fired,” he said during a 2024 <em>State of Mine</em> interview. “I was difficult and they were difficult with me for being difficult, and I don’t blame them for firing me. I would have fired me, too.”</p>
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<p>Shortly after New Year 2023, <em>General Hospital</em> made Britt Westbourne the hook killer’s latest victim — for a super sweet reason. “I’m in love,” her portrayer told <a href="http://soapoperadigest.com" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a>, “and have been doing long-distance for almost a year now, and my partner cannot move to the States at the moment.” Beyond that, the actress was ready to chase after some other career goals.</p>
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<p>In the ’70s and ’80s, the <em>Guiding Light</em> star was the hottest of commodities and his character, womanizing Alan Spaulding, a major love-to-hate villain. Even after testing positive for HIV, the actor continued to power through and slay as Springfield’s master manipulator. But in 1988, his health took such a turn for the worse that he was forced to bow out. (Daniel Pilon and then Ron Raines stepped in as Alan.) A year later, <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/soaps/news/600572/guiding-light-christopher-bernau-tribute-soap-star-died-aids-alan-spaulding/" target="_blank">Bernau died</a> at just 49 years old of a heart attack brought on by complications from AIDS.</p>
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<p>Two years ahead of her exit from <em>Dallas</em>, the leading lady informed the powers that be that Season 9 would be her last; she wanted to form her own production company. Her bosses waited until she had one foot out the door to approach her rep about a new contract. “It was belated and somewhat insulting,” she told <a href="https://ew.com/tv/2018/03/31/why-victoria-principal-turned-down-a-texas-sized-payday-on-dallas/" target="_blank"><em>Entertainment Weekly</em></a> in 2018. And it did nothing to sway her. “Apparently, I was not behaving the way they expected an actress to behave,” Principal said, “so my parking space was taken away…The pressure intensified until…a few days before my final scene in the car accident, I’m offered a per-episode salary that would have made me the highest-paid woman on TV.” Not even that tempted her. “I wasn’t for sale.”</p>
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<p>Although the soap vet had helped take <em>Another World</em> to the top of the ratings —thanks to the polarizing Alice Matthews/Steven Frame/Rachel Davis love triangle —the arrival of new executive producer Paul Rauch and headwriter Harding “Pete”Lemay marked the beginning of the end of the actor’s stay in Bay City. Though Reinholt had always played his character as streetwise, “Pete took Steve… into the country,” <a href="https://soaphub.com/days-of-our-lives/another-world-scandal-george-reinholt-and-jacqueline-courtney-fired/#flyout-close" target="_blank">SoapHub</a> quotes the late star as having marveled. “That’s when I said, ‘Oh, this is not where we were.’ That was a major rift between Pete and Paul and myself” — one that reportedly resulted in on-set contention that led to the leading man’s ouster.</p>
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<p>Following the seemingly fatal tumble that <em>Young & Restless</em>’ Drucilla Winters took off of a cliff in 2007, her portrayer told<em>Black Press Magazine</em>, “We have the most popular daytime show and the No. 1 show for African-Americans, hands down. Yet there are no Black writers, there are no Black producers, there are no Black directors…” Eight years later, the actress filed a lawsuit alleging that the soap and its production company had engaged in racial discrimination and retaliation. (A settlement was reached in 2017.)</p>
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<p>The day that the veteran of <em>All My Children</em> and <em>Dallas</em> learned that he had tested <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/soaps/news/578000/dack-rambo-last-soap-appearance-before-dying-aids/" target="_blank">positive for HIV</a>, he went to work at <em>Another World</em>, where he was playing conniving Grant Harrison, taped his scenes and left… for good. “I knew that I would not be an actor the rest of my life,” he told the <em>Washington Post</em>. “I’ve always felt a need to do something to help people.” And that, he did; after leaving showbiz, he worked regularly with AIDS Project Los Angeles. Three years after Rambo’s 1991 exit from the soap, he passed away at just 52 years old from complications from AIDS.</p>
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<p>In 2011, the <em>General Hospital</em> vet was up to her ears in storyline as Elizabeth Webber. So she was understandably shocked to be told that she was <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/general-hospital/news/14467/rebecca-herbst-fired-from-general-hospital-update/" target="_blank">being let go</a>. “It was surreal,” she said at the time. “I didn’t see it coming.” Not only was she a popular frontburner mainstay, but Liz’s messy triangle with half brothers Lucky Spencer and Nikolas Cassadine was far from resolved. “That’s why it did take me by surprise.” Luckily, fan outcry over then-executive producer Jill Farren Phelps’ decision to pink-slip Herbst was so loud that the upsetting move was unmade.</p>
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<p>When the original cast member of <em>The Bold and the Beautiful</em> revealed in 2012 that he’d donned his last Speedo as Ridge Forrester, viewers all had the same question: Why? Why? Why? (Yes, we always asked it three times.) Was it salary issues? “It had to do with everything involved with it,” he told <a href="https://ew.com/article/2012/08/23/ronn-moss-bold-and-the-beautiful-exit-interview/" target="_blank"><em>Entertainment Weekly</em></a>. “Everything combined.” Beyond that, he felt that he was owed “the chance to do all the creative things that I haven’t had a chance to do in 25 years” because of the job.</p>
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<p>After <em>The Young and the Restless</em>’ Phyllis Summers slipped into a coma in 2013, her portrayer told <a href="https://www.sj-r.com/story/entertainment/television/2013/08/01/exclusive-michelle-stafford-dishes-her/43808797007/" target="_blank"><em>TV Guide</em></a> that “a primary reason I have left is that I want to do comedy” — which she did with her web series,<em>The Stafford Project</em>. “I don’t feel comfortable divulging all of my many personal reasons for leaving the show, but I’ve been very honest with the people [there]and with the fans that there is no malice.” After a 2014-19 run as Nina Reeves on <em>General Hospital</em>, the Emmy winner returned to her old stomping grounds, replacing her replacement, Gina Tognoni.</p>
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<p>By the 10th season of <em>Knots Landing</em>, the daytime grad (who’d later pass through <em>General Hospital</em> as Madeline Reeves) had had enough of dear Abby Ewing. Or, more to the point, she had had enough of the schedule that she had to keep in order to play the mega-bitch. “I’m looking forward to… having a personal life again,” she told <em>TV Guide</em>. “<em>Knots Landing</em> was never one of those shows that was cranked out with assembly-line efficiency. I look back on it and think, ‘Did I really get up all the time at 5 o’clock in the morning? Did I really work 16-hour days?’ I love ballet, and I remember having tickets five nights in a row and not being able to make the first four performances. On the last night, we were shooting late again, and I was close to tears.” A sympathetic producer got her a limo that evening, and “20 terrifying minutes” later, she made it to at least that performance.</p>
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<p>“I got into entrepreneurship probably about [2013],” the <em>Days of Our Lives</em> Emmy winner told Soaps.com a decade later, “and once 2019 rolled around, I had to make a decision.” Would he stay on as Sonny Kiriakis or go? In the end, he thought, “‘It’s just kind of time. I want to move to Florida. I want to be by my family. I want to do entrepreneur stuff full-time.” And so he did.</p>
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<p>When the daytime legend packed up her <em>General Hospital</em> dressing room in 2006, it felt like the right thing to do. The summer she’d turned 40 and husband Jonathan Frakes, 50, then-executive producer Jill Farren Phelps told her that she couldn’t have a six-week summer break from her role of Laura Spencer, Francis disclosed to <a href="http://geniefrancis.net/tvguidesept02.html" target="_blank"><em>TV Guide</em></a> at the time. The EP also said “I was not within my legal right to ask for it. Apparently, they put in my last contract that I had to give 120 days notice to get a six-week vacation. I had completely forgotten that it was there, and that made me really angry because I fought all along to have equality with my partner, Tony [Geary, aka Luke Spencer]… So I just said, ‘That’s it. I can’t do it [anymore].’” Not until 2015 would Francis return full-time to the part that she took on back in 1977.</p>
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<p>Though <em>Dynasty</em> was still becoming a primetime megahit in its second season, this original cast member didn’t want to go along for the ride. How come? He wasn’t crazy about his character, Steven Carrington. He “doesn’t have any fun,” the actor told <em>Interview</em>. “He doesn’t laugh. He has no humor.” Corley was recast with <em>Days of Our Lives</em> alum Jack Coleman but reprised his old role for the 1991 miniseries <em>Dynasty: The Reunion.</em></p>
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<p>In 1982, <em>Ryan’s Hope</em> had just built a whole family around the fan favorite’s troublemaking character, Kimberly Harris, when the soap’s creators were put back in charge. Overnight, gone were the actors playing her newfound father, half sister and stepmother —<em>and</em> Maroney herself. “They asked us all to not take our vacations so all the characters would be available for what they wanted to write,” she recalls in Tom Lisanti’s excellent <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/soaps/news/719723/soap-real-life-romances-feuds-ryans-hope/" target="_blank">oral history of the show</a>. “I was so mad that I declined and took my vacation. I wasn’t going to help them write me, and everyone else, out of the show.”</p>
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<p>By the time Alexander joined <em>General Hospital</em> in 1973, she was already a big soap star, owing to her seven-year run as Susan Martin on <em>Days of Our Lives</em>. In fact, the actress was <em>so</em> popular that ABC had to pay big bucks to steal her away to play Dr. Lesley Williams. But by 1984, despite lightning having struck twice to make Lesley as well-loved as Susan ever was, the network wasn’t willing to meet Alexander’s contract demands, so she quit. Following Lesley’s “death,” her portrayer returned to daytime — and a fat payday — as Mary McKinnon on <em>Another World.</em></p>
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<p>Back in 2013, <em>Bold & Beautiful</em> fans were bereft to read in <em>Soap Opera Digest</em> that the future Emmy winner was leaving her role of Steffy Forrester. But it turned out to be much ado about nothing. Though she had opted not to renew her contract, despite reports that the show “<a href="https://www.soapcentral.com/bold-and-beautiful/news/2013/0514-wood.php" target="_blank">threw a lot of money at her</a>” to stay, she remained on recurring status until she re-upped two years later. While a free agent, so to speak, Wood starred in a TV movie (<em>Her Husband’s Betrayal</em>), guested on other shows (on <em>Castle</em> and <em>Anger Management</em>) and hosted a reality series (<em>Party On</em>). <em>Bold & Beautiful</em> boss Bradley Bell had “made me want to stay here while pursuing other things,” she said back then. “I like being able to do daytime, primetime and films all at the same time.”</p>
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<p>Five years after the debut of <em>Santa Barbara</em> — and the introduction of sterling-silver-tongued devil Mason Capwell — his fan-favorite portrayer called it a day. “I felt like the show deteriorated after [its creators] left,” he told <a href="http://santabarbara-online.com/InterviewLDavies2.htm" target="_blank"><em>Santa Barbara</em> Online</a> in 2009. In his estimation, the daytime drama had lost not only its sense of humor but its heart.</p>
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<p>Fans of <em>General Hospital </em>supercouple“Sprina” were heartbroken in 2022 when the teenager who played Trina Robinson left before the character had gotten to be with true love Spencer Cassadine. Mikayla had a very good reason for bailing, though: Then a UCLA freshman, she told <a href="https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/sydney-mikayla-on-her-gh-exit/" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a> that “I feel like this is the right time to dive in and enjoy the college experience to the fullest.”</p>
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<p>The Emmy winner, who had played reformed rat bastard Paul Williams on <em>The Young and the Restless</em> since 1978, was taken off contract in 2018 by then-executive producer Charles Pratt Jr. “He had a history of cutting legendary characters from his shows,” Davidson told <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/691720/why-did-doug-davidson-leave/" target="_blank">SoapHub</a>. “He made the claim that nobody has to know [I’d been let go].” Of course, everyone knew. And they eventually found out why. “There’s always story. But that’s not the reason [I’m not there and Danny Romalotti is],” the actor said. “Paul is more expensive than Danny. That’s what it’s all about.”</p>
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<p>When the <em>General Hospital</em> star turned down a chance to renew her contract for four years in 2006, people were stunned. She had a home on the frontburner as Jason Morgan’s love interest and Sonny Corinthos’ half sister, Courtney Matthews. But “I was like, ‘I can’t stay. I am so unhappy,’” she recalled 17 years later. Part of the <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/general-hospital/news/659104/why-did-alicia-leigh-willis-leave-general-hospital-courtney/" target="_blank">reason was Maurice Benard</a>. Unaware that her castmate was struggling with bipolar disorder, “I would come to work, and one day you would be the most charming, lovely person, and then another day I was a little scared of you,” she told him during an episode of his podcast. “I didn’t understand it. I was just a kid, just a stupid, naive kid who was still finding her way.”</p>
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<p>An overnight sensation as <em>Days of Our Lives</em>’ EJ DiMera, the British-born actor stuck with the soap for eight years. On his website, he explains <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/days-of-our-lives/news/581024/days-of-our-lives-james-scott-insists-never-return-ej-dimera/" target="_blank">his reason for leaving</a> thusly: “In 2014, after a successful career in the entertainment industry, I found myself with everything and nothing. I had worked tirelessly for the better part of two decades to attain wealth and validation, yet no external thing could touch the emptiness I felt and the worthlessness I experienced.” Scott decided to face his “despair and depression” in order to change his life, which led to an Indian meditation center. “I went for a week and stayed for a year.” After his journey, he discovered a “newfound peace” and decided that he wanted to “inspire others to do the same.”</p>
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<p>In 1991, the <em>Santa Barbara</em> leading lady had just begun a split-personality storyline for her beloved character, Eden Capwell, when she herself split —for primetime. The Emmy winner left the role that had allowed her to put <em>All My Children</em> mean girl Liza Colby in rearview to star in <em>Palace Guard</em>, which aired only twice before being cancelled.</p>
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<p>As the Emmy winner’s fourth-year option with <em>General Hospital</em> approached, he started thinking that maybe it was time to leave Port Charles behind. Although he had a plum part in Morgan Corinthos, “there were a couple of big projects that I had gotten close on while I was at” the soap, he told <a href="https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/bryan-craig-left-gh/" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a> in 2016, “and my manager and I just kind of made the decision that it was time to go back out there.” Since Sonny and Carly’s son was killed off, his portrayer has landed not one but two series-regular gigs (first on the short-lived <em>Grand Hotel</em>, then on <em>Good Trouble</em>).</p>
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<p>Fresh from winning a Daytime Emmy for <em>Ryan’s Hope</em>, the soap vet was pink-slipped in 1984 after a dozen years as pot-stirring power player Rae Woodard. “Contrary to some reports, I was fired, not demoted to recurring,” she says in the page-turner that tells the <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/soaps/news/719723/soap-real-life-romances-feuds-ryans-hope/" target="_blank">backstage story</a> of the much-missed soap. “I think [new EP] Joe Hardy really wanted to put his own stamp on the show. He had people he had worked with and liked for a long time and wanted to bring them in.”</p>
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<p>Although when news spread in the spring of 2022 that <em>The Young and the Restless</em> had dropped the Emmy winner, there were signs that Rey Rosales was about to be thrust into a love triangle with wife Sharon and pal Chelsea Lawson… Well, those signs were misleading; his story was headed for the finish line. “Maybe I should have seen the writing on the wall,” said the actor on the <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/627226/young-restless-jordi-vilasuso-why-he-really-left-rey-exit/" target="_blank"><em>Making It Work</em> podcast</a> that he hosts with his real-life missus. Near the end, “the scripts that I was given were very minimal.”</p>
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<p>After 13 years as <em>Days of Our Lives</em>’ trouble magnet Gabi Hernandez, the fan favorite made the difficult decision to leave the role of a lifetime — in part to advance her career and in part to honor her late father, who died by suicide not long after she was cast. “I had always spoken to my dad about my dreams,” Banus told <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/essay/camila-banus-why-i-left-days-of-our-lives-rcna85120" target="_blank"><em>Today</em></a> in 2023. “He knew my ultimate goal is to create amazing stories and cultivate characters — to be on the big screen… He didn’t stay to see his dreams realized — the depression took over. I need to reach mine for him, and me, and our family.”</p>
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<p>When the Daytime Emmy winner left his role of Dylan McAvoy on <em>The Young and the Restless</em> in 2016, he tweeted that “it feels right to move on to <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/48809/steve-burton-announces-decision-to-leave-yr/" target="_blank">new adventures in my life</a>.” But just a year later, he leapt back into an <em>old</em> adventure, returning to <em>General Hospital</em> as Jason Morgan, the hitman he’d previously played for nearly 20 years.</p>
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<p>After <em>General Hospital</em> reinstated the actor as Jason, and gave recast Billy Miller a new character to play (in Jason’s heretofore-unknown twin brother, Drew Cain), he wound up being shown to the exit. The show “has let me go,” he announced in November 2021, “because of the vaccine mandate” that was put in place to safeguard the cast and crew from COVID-19. He later reprised his <em>Days of Our Lives</em> role of Harris Michaels.</p>
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<p>The late soap great was at the height of her popularity when she abruptly left <em>One Life to Live</em> in 1990. Not until years afterward would she disclose that she’d abandoned her role of trouble magnet Tina Lord and retired from public life for nearly a decade because she’d been afraid of a stalker who’d gone so far as to attack her at the soap’s Manhattan studio. “It’s forever changed me,” she once told <em>People</em>. “There’s no way it could not.” In 1999, she made a triumphant return to daytime as trashy Tawny Moore on <em>Bold & Beautiful</em> (and eventually reclaimed the oft-recast role of Tina).</p>
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<p><em>Days of Our Lives</em>’ audience had fallen as hard for the actor as Marlena Evans had for Roman Brady in 1984. But that didn’t stop Northrop from passing through the revolving door. “It was a choice I made because I had <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/days-of-our-lives/news/584822/days-of-our-lives-roman-brady-death-anniversary-wayne-northrop/" target="_blank">itchy feet</a>,” he told the <em>Chicago Tribune</em>. And a choice that he ultimately unmade, reclaiming his role in 1991 from Drake Hogestyn (who was then assigned the new part of John Black).</p>
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<p>An original <em>Knots Landing</em> cast member, Van Ark moved off the cul-de-sac as long-suffering author Valene Ewing in 1992 —just one season shy of the <em>Dallas</em> spinoff’s last hurrah. Being a regular on the show, she told the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-06-26-ca-1185-story.html" target="_blank"><em>Los Angeles Times</em></a> ahead of her exit, “I was in a comfortable spot… and an artist should not be comfortable.” Van Ark thought that she’d soon be starring in a sitcom…but it wasn’t picked up. “To say I wasn’t devastated isn’t true. I was,”she admitted. “The [comedy] would have solved a lot of things. But if I’d had it to do over, I would have done everything exactly the same.”</p>
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<p>A familiar face in primetime, Muhney was well-received as <em>Young & Restless</em>’ recast Adam Newman in 2009. But five years later, he was shown the door amid allegations that he had sexually harassed a castmate. While denying that the rumor was true, he acknowledged to Huff Post that “sometimes I’ve been too outspoken. Sometimes I’ve walked around with a big backpack full of hubris. That is entirely on me.”</p>
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<p>From 1997-2012, the Emmy winner bopped back and forth between <em>The Young and the Restless</em> and <em>The Bold and the Beautiful</em> as mischievous Amber Moore. Finally, the latter soap dropped the scene stealer to recurring status —only she hasn’t recurred in over a decade now. Frantz’s last appearance in the role came in 2013 when Amber returned to Genoa City for to celebrate the life of her late mentor, Katherine Chancellor.</p>
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<p>As hard as it is to imagine <em>Days of Our Lives</em> without Abe Carver in the mix, it actually happened in 1990. His portrayer left his long-running role to replace <em>Hill Street Blues</em> vet Taurean Blacque on <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-gates/news/723448/generations-first-black-soap-before-the-gates/" target="_blank"><em>Generations</em></a>, the groundbreaking NBC soap that was the first to focus on a Black family (whose patriarch Blacque had been playing). When <em>Generations</em>, sadly, was sent to the daytime-drama graveyard, future Emmy winner Reynolds was invited to reprise his former role on <em>Days of Our Lives.</em></p>
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<p>Though the actress had been well-received as a recast Cassie Callison on <em>One Life to Live</em>, she was fired after almost a decade in 1999 —while on maternity leave! Then-executive producer Jill Farren Phelps took some serious heat for that one. Later, Bonarrigo would reprise her role now and again for guest appearances on the soap.</p>
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<p>For years, it seemed as if <em>General Hospital</em> would do anything to keep the Emmy winner in its cast. When <em>One Life to Live</em> refused to let <em>General Hospital</em> keep him as Todd Manning, the powers that be recast him as Franco Baldwin. And when that character had run its course, Howarth was given a new role, Austin Gatlin-Holt. But in 2023, he was told that he “would not be offered a new contract and that the character of Austin would be killed, and that this was something that [they] needed to do to move story.” Not sure how it accomplished that, since as of this writing, the show still hasn’t bothered to solve the mystery of Austin’s murder.</p>
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<p>The two-time Emmy winner was for years our girl for all seasons as <em>Young & Restless</em>’ impetuous Summer Newman. But in 2021, she and the soap <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/607443/young-restless-hunter-king-why-she-leave-summer-return/" target="_blank">couldn’t agree</a> on the terms of a new contract. “When these things happen, there’s a variety of reasons why,” she said. “It’s such an odd process [hammering out a deal] but also feeling like it’s your family. It’s definitely weird.” Ultimately, Summer was recast with Allison Lanier, and King went on to become a Hallmark Channel MVP.</p>
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<p>The answer to the burning question “Who shot J.R. Ewing?” the <em>Dallas</em> supervixen thought that she’d have the world at her feet after being killed off as opportunistic Kristin Shepard. “I made that classic mistake,” she told the <em>Daily Mail</em> in 2015, of “having my 15 minutes of fame and thinking I could afford to wait around for more ‘arty’ roles…I wanted something else, something of more substance, and of course, that’s not going to happen just from starring in <em>Dallas</em>.”</p>
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<p>The odds were against RKK when <em>Days of Our Lives</em> tapped him in 1992 to replace the immensely popular Peter Reckell as Bo Brady. But by God, the recast beat the odds and won over the audience. Despite accomplishing that Mission: Seemingly Impossible, Kelker-Keller was axed three years later — in part so that the show could bring back Reckell and, per IMDb, in part because he was locked in a contract dispute with the show.</p>
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<p>After 25 years as the queen bee of <em>Bold & Beautiful</em>, the four-time Emmy winner retired in 2012. But, in order to give the show time to script a proper send-off for her iconic character, brooch-wearing bulldozer Stephanie Forrester, the daytime legend signed a short-term contract to carry on a little bit longer. As a result, Stephanie’s death from lung cancer is now and always will be considered one of the <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/gallery/bold-beautiful-most-shocking-deaths-all-time-list-photos/" target="_blank">soap’s most poignant passings</a>.</p>
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<p>When <em>Ryan’s Hope</em> debuted in 1975, the character of Frank Ryan was supposed to be killed off soon after. But viewers really took to the aspiring politician and his portrayer, so the character got a whole new lease on life…which it doesn’t sound like Hawkins could handle. “Michael perhaps was not well mentally,”Helen Gallagher, who played Frank’s mother Maeve, suggests in Tom Lisanti’s superlative <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/soaps/news/719723/soap-real-life-romances-feuds-ryans-hope/" target="_blank">oral history of <em>Ryan’s Hope</em></a>. “You’d look at his script, and it was all blacked out. He was not well enough to continue.” So the role was recast and re-recast and…</p>
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<p>After <em>The Young and the Restless</em> dropped the soap vet to recurring status as Abby Newman in 2012, she was offered the opportunity to replace Julie Marie Berman as Luke and Laura Spencer’s daughter Lulu on <em>General Hospital</em>. Not only did the gig come with a contract, but “the artist in me couldn’t walk away from this,” she told <a href="https://michaelfairmantv.com/emme-rylan-on-why-she-chose-to-leave-yr-become-ghs-new-lulu-spencer-falconeri/2013/03/22/">Michael Fairman TV</a>. “It was so intriguing… I had to put all the political and personal stuff aside and follow my creative instincts.” Rylan remained in Port Charles until 2020, at which point… oh dear.</p>
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<p>As the holidays rolled around in the fall of 2020, <em>General Hospital</em> set off an explosion at the Floating Rib that killed Dev Cerci and “Hot Dustin” and put Lulu in what would turn out to be a years-long coma. “The only thing I can say” about exiting the soap, the actress Instagrammed at the time, “is that no. <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/general-hospital/news/582695/general-hospital-emme-rylan-addresses-exit-rumors-lulu-sudden-trip/" target="_blank">I did not choose this</a>.” At least she was told that if her character ever woke up, <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/general-hospital/news/738958/lulu-return/" target="_blank">she’d be called in</a> to once again play the part. “That could always change. Who knows?”</p>
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<p>The Emmy winner had been winning raves for his work as <em>Days of Our Lives</em>’ Stefan DiMera when he was abruptly replaced in 2019 by Brandon Barash. Being apart from his family in Indiana while he was working in L.A. weighed heavily on Christopher, he later explained to <em>Soaps in Depth</em>, adding, “Alcohol addiction is something I’ve battled since I was a teenager. I’ve had some amazing successes with it and some really awful failures.” Sadly, the <em>General Hospital</em> alumnus <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/gallery/tyler-christopher-remembered-tribute-photos-general-hospital/" target="_blank">passed away in 2023</a>.</p>
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<p>Though the Emmy winner had been playing Lily Walsh on <em>As the World Turns</em> since she was 15 years old, her run as the soap’s front-and-center heroine came to an abrupt end in 2008. Why? “I did not want storyline approval —no one gets that,” <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/as-the-world-turns/news/1664/martha-byrne-talks-about-leaving-atwt/" target="_blank">she said</a> at the time. But “I had already taken a substantial pay reduction last year. The only thing I wanted was to work at least the same amount of episodes this year as last year. This was denied, and that is when I heard about my recast.” <em>Loving</em> alum Noelle Beck wound up playing Lily for the rest of <em>As the World Turns</em>’ run.</p>
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<p>The Emmy winner was such a familiar face as Cliff Warner on <em>All My Children f</em>or a decade that he starred in one of those “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV” commercials. Yet he was fired in 1989 — a real-life plot twist that he told <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2019/11/25/young-and-the-restless-peter-bergman-30-years-jack-abbott/4253741002/" target="_blank"><em>USA Today</em></a> was “just devastating.” Happily, he immediately auditioned for <em>Young & Restless</em> and became that show’s Jack Abbott. “I was literally unemployed for eight days,” he marveled to <a href="https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/tbt-peter-bergman1/" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a> in 2023.</p>
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<p>In the late 1990s, the Emmy winner (now <em>General Hospital</em> femme fatale Ava Jerome) was just beginning her daytime career — and wowing <em>As the World Turns</em>’ audience as Carly Tenney — when she decided to make her maternity leave a permanent leave. “I was told I would only get six weeks” with my firstborn, she explained to <a href="https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/tbt-maura-west/" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a> in 1997. “I <em>made</em> this child. I had to do right by him.” Thankfully, she was ultimately enticed to return and become the daytime legend that she now is.</p>
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<p>Legend has it that back in 1981, both the rocker and his manager were so sure that his album <em>Working Class Dog</em> was going to tank that they had him accept the role of Dr. Noah Drake on <em>General Hospital</em>. To their surprise — and, no doubt, delight —the LP was a smash. (Thanks, “Jessie’s Girl”!) Two years later, Springfield left a trail of broken hearts in his wake as Patrick’s father scrubbed out so that his portrayer could resume the music career that he hadn’t expected to take off quite as suddenly as it had.</p>
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<p><em>Young & Restless</em> viewers couldn’t figure out why, after the show struck pay dirt with the pairing of Devon Hamilton and Hilary Curtis, it would let her portrayer Mishael Morgan leave. “They were <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/news/51037/interview-mishael-morgans-yr-departure-explained-by-manager/" target="_blank">not prepared to give her a raise</a>,” her manager explained in 2018. “We felt that we were put in the position that we had no choice but to explore other options… It was sort of a ‘Take it or leave it’ scenario.” A year later, a deal was struck that returned Morgan to the soap as Hilary’s surprise twin sister, Amanda Sinclair.</p>
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<p>The <em>Days of Our Lives</em> veteran can sum up the reason for his myriad exits thusly: Former headwriter “James Reilly was not a very nice guy.” Beyond that, the actor, who’s played Tony DiMera off and on since 1981, explained to Soaps.com in 2024 that “there was a bit of a sabotage that went on because I was popular on the show. There was another actor and an actress who wanted to see me go.” According to Penghlis, they got word to Reilly that he’d dissed his scripts. “So when I get called up to the producers, they said, ‘Oh my God, what did you say? James Reilly called up screaming that he’s going to kill you off!'” And that, he did. Repeatedly. “Every time he came back,” Penghlis marveled, “he’d kill me.”</p>
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