Warning: This article contains spoilers about Wednesday’s episode of Good Trouble.
The drama is only just getting started at The Coterie, but Callie got her happily ever after ending as series star Maia Mitchell has exited Good Trouble.
“I was ugly crying. Big time,” Mitchell tells EW of filming her last episode of the Freeform drama. “It was a really tough decision to leave the show but I’m really proud of the episode. It honors Callie and the Coterie and her journey in a really perfect way, so I’m happy.”
In season 4’s second episode, it was revealed that Callie got her dream job at the ACLU and was moving from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. — which just so happens to be where her ex Jamie (Beau Mirchoff) is also moving, since he also coincidentally accepted a new job in D.C. After they ran into each other on the flight leaving Los Angeles, they smiled as they literally flew off into the sunset together.
It was the perfect ending (or new beginning?) for this will-they-won’t-they couple, full of hope for a promising future, while the rest of the episode was packed full of emotional goodbyes from Mariana (Cierra Ramirez) and the rest of the Coterie fam as Callie moved out on only two days notice. Mariana was initially upset at the shocking (and swift!) news, but she eventually came around and threw a last-minute goodbye party for Callie with their moms (Teri Polo and Sherri Saum) and brother Jude (Hayden Byerly) also in attendance.
While Mitchell is no longer a series regular on Good Trouble (along with Mirchoff, who also exited as series regular at the end of the episode), will she return to visit the Coterie in future episodes as a guest star like every other Adams Fosters family member loves to do? Below, check out what Mitchell told EW over Zoom from Australia about why she left the show, if she’ll return in the future, and what she’s up to now.
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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why did you want to leave Good Trouble?
MAIA MITCHELL: It’s really bittersweet. It’s honestly pretty sad. I sat with it for a really long time and tried to talk myself out of it. But with the pandemic — everyone met so many challenges during the past couple of years and for me, it was just being away from my family. I’m so close with my family and I have spent most of my time in America being quite homesick. I have found community and family with The Fosters and Good Trouble and that’s kept me going.
But just not being able to get to family at the moment and having to spend so much time away from them even while we shut down for a really long time and I wasn’t able to get home, they weren’t able to come to me … just knowing that I couldn’t get to my mom, my brother, my dad in such a chaotic time, everything in me knew it was time to come home. And it was something that I would have done eventually when the show would come to an end but I think [the pandemic] just fast tracked it for me and it wasn’t really a choice. I just had to be with my loved ones in such a scary, tumultuous time.
When did you make this decision?
I knew that I would move home eventually. LA never really felt like home to me. I’m from a small town. I’m actually on a farm right now. [Laughs] So the city isn’t really for me. It was gradual. I think honestly, when I put my mom on a plane — it was the day after we shut down production and my mom had been visiting, and I put her on a plane the next day and it just felt really wrong. It felt wrong that I wasn’t getting on the plane with her, and of course, I couldn’t go because we didn’t know when we’d start production again. It was during that shutdown when I couldn’t be around my Coterie family and the Good Trouble family either, it was quite a lonely time for so many people and that was when I felt that I needed to let them know that this needs to be my last season.
How did you go about breaking the news to everyone on Good Trouble?
I was terrified. [Laughs] But they completely understood. We’re all so close personally so they’ve known where I’ve been and what I’ve been going through so there wasn’t much surprise. They were like, “We’re going to take care of the storyline for you. We’re going to make sure that it’s a really graceful exit.” There was only support. Everyone knows that family comes first right now. So I was terrified but I didn’t need to be, they were really amazing.
But then we had to actually film the thing, which was impossible because my character was supposed to keep it together. Constance [Zimmer] was like, “You can’t cry for any of these goodbye scenes. And then, at the end of her speech, she can cry a little bit and then with Mariana on the roof, you let her rip.” And I was like, “Well, the problem isn’t letting it rip here. The problem is me keeping it together.” Because everyone around me is crying all the time, even Emma [Hunton] who’s like one of my best friends, and we’re not even supposed to be friends on the show but she’s bawling her eyes out. I was like, “Stop it. That’s so rude. It’s sabotage!” It was really difficult. And Cierra would not stop crying the entire time, she was just bawling her eyes out every scene. I was like, “You can’t do this to me!” They couldn’t make it easy for me, they had to pull on every single heartstring. Every single one.
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What were the conversations like when it came to figuring out how to end Callie’s story? Did you have any input on how she left?
Yeah, there were definitely a lot of conversations about it. I was obviously a curious cat but I totally trust the writers and so I let them go at it. The one thing I was pretty adamant on was Callie and Jamie resolving. And they were on board too, that was just across the board, no-brainer. I love the way they did it. The last scene, flying off into the sunset, so dramatic, so awesome. They were super receptive, but honestly everything that I’d wanted from it, they were already always on the same page with that stuff.
Not going to lie, that scene on the plane was perfect.
The universe just pulled them together. We want people to be yelling and screaming at that reveal.
Where do you think their love story goes from here? Are they immediately going to be back together when they get to D.C.?
I think it’s on. I think they start a firm together. The options are endless for those two. They’re an unstoppable couple taking on D.C. and I love that for them. It’s awesome because they both had such a push-and-pull struggle with their ethics and the gray areas and the morals and all that but they’ve kind of met in the middle now and so they can be unstoppable together.
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With all of Callie’s many, many emotional goodbye scenes, which one was the most difficult for you to film?
Cierra’s — me and Cierra have been working together now for like almost 10 years. She was 17 when we filmed The Fosters pilot, and we have become truly so close. It was my last day and the last scene I filmed with Cierra was the cab driving away, which was just cruel. It was really tough because we were both supposed to be keeping it together on camera. We were outside the Palace Theatre and our first day filming the pilot had been outside the Palace Theatre as well on that curb, and we’d taken a picture of us with the Palace sign behind us and then we took another picture to match it on my last day. She actually posted it and some of the fans were like, “Maia’s leaving! What’s happening?!” I felt so bad. But that was a really hard day for my last day. And then following that was the Malika scene, which was probably the second hardest. Both of those scenes were the hardest scenes to shoot and both were on my last day so it was hard but kind of perfect.
One of the best parts of The Fosters and Good Trouble universe is how no one ever really is gone from the franchise for good because the Adams Fosters are such a close family despite not living in the same city anymore, so we constantly see characters return. Do you have plans to return for cameos or episodes in the future?
Maybe … ? [Laughs] That’s on my like, things that I’m not supposed to mention, so … did I just ruin it?
That sounds like there’s hope!
Hope is good right now.
What’s next for you now that your time as a series regular on Good Trouble is over?
I bought a farm, so I’m living out here on this farm. I just pump the water tanks and take care of the property. I have movie nights with my mom, which I’ve never been able to do. I have been really enjoying just being home and the break, honestly. Also my hometown, Lismore, Australia, has been through a pretty bad natural disaster, a flash flood, so I’ll be dealing with that for a few months. We’re just out there, with mud on me, cleaning up houses, and hopefully rallying the government to give us some more support. It’s been pretty brutal but the community is amazing and the support from all over the region has been pretty overwhelming so we’re super, super grateful to anyone who’s come out and helped.
Information on how to help the flood recovery efforts in Australia can be found here.
Good Trouble airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Freeform.
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