After playing a pivotal role through most of Prison Break, fans are still wondering why exactly Sarah Wayne Callies' Dr. Sara Tancredi left the story.
Prison Break centers around a pair of brothers, one (Lincoln Burrows) sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit and another (Michael Scofield) who comes up with a plan to help him escape. To do this, Michael deliberately gets himself arrested and thrown in jail to help with the escape plan from the inside.
Included in the main cast is Sarah Wayne Callies' Dr. Sara Tancredi, who works at the prison as its medical professional and is also the daughter of Illinois Governor Frank Tancredi.
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Why Did Sara Leave Prison Break?
Over the first two seasons of Prison Break, Sarah Wayne Callies' Dr. Sara Tancredi plays a key role in the cast.
She and Wentworth Miller's Michael Scofield quickly develop an on-again-off-again relationship with each other, although her situation changes drastically at the beginning of Season 3.
At the end of Season 2, Sara surrenders herself to the FBI and is faced with a 12-year prison sentence before being exonerated in the season finale.
She reunites with her brothers in Panama to give them the good news, but after killing Secret Service Agent William Kim, Michael confesses to her crime and protects her.
Season 3 sees Sara kidnapped and taken hostage, and after her head is sent away in a box as an intimidation tactic. Although she sends Michael and Lincoln clues to help break her out, she is believed to be dead after her head is discovered.
In Season 4, her death is revealed to be fake as Sarah Wayne Callies returns to the series for another stint as Sara Tancredi. The head in the box is revealed to be fake and used by Gretchen Morgan to have leverage over the brothers after Sara escaped to Chicago.
Sara Actresss' Absence From Prison Break Explained
The main reason behind Sarah Wayne Callies' exit from Prison Break was due to contract disputes with Fox.
Additionally (via TV Guide), Callies had announced that she was pregnant about a year before Season 3 premiered. As is the case with most pregnancies for TV stars, this affected the TV studio's plans for her character in Season 3 of Prison Break.
Speaking with TV Guide, showrunner Matt Olmstead explained how there were no plans to kill the character off but that the team still had "to keep everyone moving forward" in the story.
This led to the idea of killing Sara off as a motivation for Michael, feeling it was "the right thing to do in order to really jolt the series:"
"What changed is that our initial pitch to the network was [rejected], so we had to go back to the drawing board. I remember we were sitting in the room thinking, 'How do we unlock Season 3, motivation-wise?' Since we're not a procedural, we have to keep everyone moving forward. We have to evolve. And given what Michael's been through, how do you keep him going? And then it was tossed out, 'What happens if Sara gets killed as an extension of what we already had planned for Season 3?' We knew that would work. But clearly it was a big conversation. And when we pitched the network, they wanted to know if there was any way we could avoid that, because everyone loved Sarah's work. But in order to make the season work, we really didn't have any other motivation for Michael. We determined that this was the right thing to do in order to really jolt the series."
There was an early plan to have her appear in the first half of the season so that "she and Michael could have a proper goodbye," which Callies passed on. This was whittled down further and further to only a few episodes, which would have been filmed at her house, but none of those ideas worked out:
"We took everything into consideration. Our initial idea was to have [Sarah/Sara appear in] the first 13 episodes, so she and Michael could have a proper goodbye. There were going to be some really emotional scenes where he tried to save her from dying, but she ultimately passed. So then we whittled it down to 11 episodes, then 10 episodes, then nine episodes, then four episodes. Then we suggested flying to her - she was pregnant [at the time] and living in a remote part of Canada - and bringing a camera crew to her house, but that wasn't accepted. We then whittled it down to just a phone conversation, and that was turned down, too. We were really looking forward to paying off that relationship. But [when] it became evident that that wasn't going to happen, we made lemonade out of a lemon."
This forced the team to kill her off "much sooner" than anticipated, although they used the fact that she was being held hostage to their advantage while Callies was pregnant and resting:
"Much sooner. We used the story to our advantage in that she was being held hostage. [Sarah] was gracious enough to let us use her image, which really helped. I totally get it, personally. She was, at the time, pregnant and living in a remote part of Canada and nesting; [she] kind of looked at the options and didn't want to go forward. No hard feelings whatsoever. The show is an ensemble. The show moves forward. There are very few untouchable actors on the show."
20th Century spokesperson Chris Alexander added that she would have had to get picked up for the entire season, according to her contract, or it would have to have been renegotiated. This led to them offering her a new deal, which she declined, leading to her exit:
"We had to either pick her up for the entire season of 22, according to her contract, or we had to make a new contract with her. We determined in May that we didn't plan to use her for the full 22, so we chose not to renew our existing contract with her. And so, to get her back for the 13 or 14 that we wanted, we had to make a new deal, and she declined."
Although the actress returned to her role for most of Season 4 and Season 5, this dispute had fans abuzz when it first made news, as it still does for some today.
Prison Break is now streaming on Hulu, Netflix, and Disney+.
Read more about other actor exits below:
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