‘All American’ Shocker: Why [SPOILER] Left Midway Through Season 5: ‘It Just Felt Right’

SPOILER alert: This story contains spoilers for “Time,” Season 5, Episode 11 of “All American.”

Taye Diggs is saying goodbye to The CW‘s “All American.” The actor has portrayed Billy Baker on the drama since its 2018 debut. During Monday’s episode, Billy tells his team that while the rumors of him leaving them to coach BAU were true, he’s since changed his mind and will remain their coach. On the way home from the Crenshaw combine, the tire on the team’s bus blew out, causing an accident. Billy got out of the bus with the rest of the team — or so he thought. After calling his wife and daughter to tell them he was okay, he realized Jabari (Simeon Daise) was stuck in the bus, which was half hanging off of a cliff. Despite Grace (Karimah Westbrook) and Jordan (Michael Evans Behling) begging, he went back in to try and rescue Jabari.

The episode ended with Grace and Jordan coming home to alert the family that Billy had died. Spencer (Daniel Ezra), who had sent Billy to voicemail earlier in the day, caught a sobbing Olivia (Samantha Logan) in his arms as the episode ended.

“I had a pretty good idea at the end of last season that that was where the season was going,” showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll tells PvNew of Diggs’ exit.

Since taking over as showrunner in Season 2, Carroll talks to each actor at the end of each season about where they see their character going.

“We were so incredibly lucky to have Taye Diggs be part of this production from day one, so one of the things that we’d always talked about was, we have no idea of how long we would be able to hold on to him. I mean, he’s Taye Diggs,” she continues.” So we were like, let’s always make sure we’re communicating with each other, and when it feels like it’s the right time, if we’re both feeling that way, we’ll have the conversation and figure out a really dope way to have him exit the show.”

At the end of Season 4, she and Diggs were talking about Billy’s journey and his legacy and it “just came together,” she says.

“It became a mutual thing of, we have an opportunity to do something that no one is going to expect. Does this feel like the right time to do it? We both felt like it was,” she recalls, noting that Diggs was “so emotional” at the time. However, she knew it was the only way to have him leave, since Billy would never intentionally leave his family behind.

“Even though it was so far in advance, I already knew that whenever it would happen, that this was how I was going to do it. I pitched it to him like I was pitching an episode, beat by beat, even though it was still easily a year away,” says Carroll. “He was like, ‘It feels like the right time and it feels like the right way to do it.’ It just felt right for both of us.”

Each of the next few episodes look at the death from a different character’s point of view — and they all are coping very differently.

For Jordan, he just got the one thing he’s always dreamed of — his dad wanting to coach him at GAU.

“Billy went to south L.A. and met Spencer after a game and said, ‘I want you to come play for me.’ He’s never said that to his son until this moment where Jordan was going to lead GAU,” she explains, referring to the conversation between Billy and Jordan in Episode 8. “So, to finally have that moment where Dad needs you, not the other way around, and wants you to come play for him and stay at GAU and then have that taken away from you before you could have that moment, what does that do to Jordan? What does Billy’s legacy look like in Jordan’s life? How does Jordan stand tall as the Baker man of the house now?”

For Spencer, he will carry around the guilt of his last conversation with Billy being argumentative, and the fact that he didn’t answer his call.

“When you have a chance to talk to someone and you send them to voicemail, and then all of a sudden that person is gone, you never get to call them back and have that conversation, that’s going to weigh on you,” says Carroll. “It weighs on Spencer in some unexpected ways, in some ways that are going to feel very familiar to people and then in some other ways where you feel like like, oh, there’s something bigger going on here.”

There’s also the grief that Olivia will face over losing her dad and what that means for her sobriety.

“This is the first man she’s ever loved. She spent a lot of time this season in this new phase of her life with her career and Billy was such a huge part of that with the GAU article. It’s kind of the last big thing they did together. So we’re going to really see her grapple with what life post-Billy looks like,” Carroll explains. “It is no secret that she is a recovering addict. But we also had no interest in repeating stories we’ve told before with Olivia in terms of, if she falls off the wagon, how she falls off the wagon. So we took a very deliberate journey with her and how she processes her grief and how she digs to find exactly what it is she’s feeling and who helps her get there.”

“All American” earned an early Season 6 renewal last month. “All American: Homecoming,” the spinoff created by Carroll in 2022, is currently airing its second season.

“All American” airs on The CW Mondays at 8 p.m.