Animal Kingdom's lead actress, Ellen Barkin, and executive producer John Wells revealed exactly why Barry "Baz" Blackwell actor Scott Speedman exited the series during Season 3. Animal Kingdom was a popular TNT series that ran from 2016 to 2022. The crime drama revolved around a family known as the Codys while they ran a criminal enterprise in California.
Three years after the end of Animal Kingdom, fans are still wondering why Scott Speedman walked away from the show during Season 3. All six seasons of the series were recently added to Netflix, so the show has seen a rise in popularity since it joined the streaming library. Due to its addition to Netflix, a lot of people are only watching Animal Kingdom for the first time, so some questions that original fans had are coming back around with the show being viewed by a new audience.
According to Animal Kingdom star Ellen Barkin (in an interview with HuffPost), her co-star, Scott Speedman, left the show simply because he asked to, indicating that Speedman did not want to be a part of the series any longer.
Specifically, Barkin was in the midst of revealing how harshly she was treated on-set while the male actors were treated with much more respect. "I had been asking to leave" the show "for four years," revealed Barkin, while also stating that Speedman's wish to depart was granted without pushback.
However, on the contrary, Animal Kingdom Executive Producer John Wells claimed in a separate interview (this one with Entertainment Weekly) that Speedman's character, Baz, was killed because it was the right time in the show's overarching story, indicating that Speedman's departure had nothing to do with the actor wanting to step down:
"It was actually a year later than we thought we were going to do it. The series is based on the Australian film by David Michod and the Baz character dies in the first 15 minutes of the movie. So that's where we thought we were going and then we realized we had more material for Baz, more stories we wanted to tell, so we put it off a little bit."
Wells even added that he had spoken to Speedman about his character not making it through the entire series, seemingly revealing that Speedman was aware that he would be killed off:
"But for the activities that the Codys are involved in, we want the show to feel as if there are consequences for what they do, so it was a pretty straightforward easy decision to make. I'd always talked to Scott [Speedman] about the fact that I didn't think it would be a five- or six-year deal so he was prepared for it when it happened."
It is worth noting that the executive producer also stated that Baz's death "came kind of organically out of the storytelling" that comprised the show. Once again, these quotes indicated that Speedman's exit wasn't his choice, but instead was decided by the creative minds behind Animal Kingdom:
"It came kind of organically out of the storytelling that we were doing. You'll see if you watch the rest of this season that you start to discover what really happened and what the history of it is. It's not a whodunnit because you know early on whodunnit, but it is a: 'What will the consequences of that death be for everybody who is involved and around it?'"
It is also worth bringing up that Speedman's Animal Kingdom exit was reported before it actually happened, but that it came on rather fast. Specifically, Deadline revealed that the actor had been cast in Grey's Anatomy (read about the six actors who could be leaving that show here), noting that it was strange that he would be starring in two top-performing shows. However, in an update, the site revealed that he would be leaving the show.
Why Did Scott Speedman Leave Animal Kingdom Show?
With conflicting claims, it is impossible to know the truth behind Scott Speedman's Animal Kingdom exit, but more signs point to him wanting to walk away from the show.
Ellen Barkin would not have a reason to lie about Speedman wanting to leave, and her claims that that happened between the actor and the show's executives were never technically disputed.
The Deadline report also seems to corroborate that side of the story more, since, in the initial report, nobody even knew that Speedman was leaving. It was only after an update was eventually pushed out that Speedman's exit was reported, making it more likely that it wasn't something that had been planned, and that the show needed to hurry and wrap up his character arc before he walked away for good.
It is possible that the creative minds behind Animal Kingdom did plan on writing Baz out of the show at some point. However, Speedman still could have told them that he wanted to leave, forcing them to rewrite the Season 3 script and kill him off earlier than they originally planned.
