Why Sophia Bush's Erin Lindsay Left Chicago P.D.

From Jack Lockett's Sam Carver leaving "Chicago Fire" to Jesse Lee Soffer's Jay Halstead departing "Chicago P.D.," many people have left the One Chicago franchise behind for on reason or another. The full reasons behind the departures may or may not have come out, but few actors have been as vocal about the circumstances of their exit as Sophia Bush. She played Halstead's partner Detective Erin Lindsay for the first four seasons, at which point her character left Chicago to dodge issues with the Internal Affairs department and become a New York-based FBI agent. 

Bush was not fired, nor was she written off the franchise purely for drama like Yuri Sardarov's Otis in "Chicago Fire" season 8. During a 2018 appearance on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast (via Deadline), she opened up on her decision to leave the show behind, and didn't mince words about the situation: 

"I realized that as I was thinking I was being the tough guy, doing the thing, showing up to work, I programmed myself to tolerate the intolerable. I quit because, what I've learned is I've been so programmed to be a good girl and to be a work horse and be a tug boat that I have always prioritized tugging the ship for the crew, for the show, for the group, ahead of my own health ... My body was, like, falling apart, because I was really, really unhappy."

Bush wasn't happy with her Chicago P.D. bosses ... or the Chicago weather

Apart from her own health concerns, Bush said that the icy cold weather of Chicago caused health troubles for multiple people involved in the production. She brought the issue up with her superiors more than once and put the prospect of walking out on the table, but they were reluctant to release her from her contract — and, according to Bush, she stayed as long as she did only because they went as far as implying that her departure might shutter the whole production:

"I'm not gonna f*** up this job for all these people and what about the camera guy whose two daughters I love and this is how he pays their rent? It becomes such a big thing. When your bosses tell you that if you raise a ruckus, you'll cost everyone their job, you believe them."

At the end of the day, though, Bush wanted out. As she said on the podcast, she had to resort to threats of her own in order to achieve this goal:

"I said, 'OK, you can put me in the position of going quietly of my own accord or you can put me in the position of suing the network to get me out of my deal and I'll write an op-ed for The New York Times and tell them why.'"

All in all, Bush's experiences on "Chicago P.D." certainly seem to have been less than satisfactory — and that's putting it lightly. "It was a consistent onslaught barrage of abusive behavior," she summarized the way she was treated on the show.