All American Stunner: Taye Diggs Exits After Five Seasons
Taye Diggs is bowing out of The CW’s All American.
During Monday’s shocking All American Season 5 Episode 11 (read full review), a bus carrying some of our most pivotal characters blew a tire and crashed.
Billy attempted to save his team, and just when it seemed like everything was fine, he learned that Jabari was still on the bus.
When he returned to save Jabari, the bus went over the cliff, leading to Billy’s shocking demise.
Big exits have been revealed months in advance in recent years, so props to The CW and the hit drama for keeping the development under wraps.
Diggs, who has been with the show since the beginning, revealed to TV Line that he had a feeling he was ready to move on while filming All American Season 4.
“I was having a great time. It was just a feeling that I got [that I was ready to leave], and I just honored that feeling,” the star told the outlet.
“It was maybe mid-fourth season. I don’t even remember, to be honest, because the showrunner [Carroll] and myself are close.”
“We’d been keeping in contact, so she had known, and we’d been talking.”
“And we decided how to go about it, and storylines and whatnot, so it was all above board, and everyone was in the know.”
Nkechi Okoro Carroll said of the decision:
“I wanted to honor whenever Taye felt right — that he’d served his purpose and felt like he’d lived the journey of Billy’s character.”
Carroll added:
And I said, “Whenever that day comes, let’s have that conversation, and make sure you know where I’m taking the character, make sure it’s a mutual decision of, ‘Oh, this kind of feels right for now.'”
“And in honoring that — because I have a conversation with my cast at the beginning and end of every season, individually — at the end of last season, Taye and I started to have that conversation.”
If you watch All American online, you know Diggs has been a pivotal part of the series since the beginning, and it will be an uphill battle for the characters to move on from his passing.
Billy was like the father figure across the series; if anything, his death should bring people together like never before.
The next couple of episodes will be pivotal as this storyline continues, but for now, we remain in shock at how these events played out.
What are your thoughts, All American Fanatics?
Are you in shock?
Hit the comments below.
Catch new episodes of All American Mondays at 8 p.m. on The CW.
Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.
