Walker’s Lindsey Morgan Explains Medical Issue That Forced Her to Leave the Series

Walker star Lindsey Morgan is coming clean about why she surprisingly left The CW’s crime drama during its second season.

At the time, Morgan cited “personal reasons” for leaving the show, but on this week’s episode of the “I’ve Never Said This Before” podcast, the actress finally revealed what caused her to leave her character Micki Ramirez behind. (Read a recap of how the character was written off.)

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“I had a spinal injury, which was affecting my nervous system and my brainstem,” she said in a clip obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. The actress said the injury caused her crippling anxiety and stress which made her unable to perform her job, adding that it was the hardest decision she’d ever made because she’d worked so hard to achieve her dream of becoming a lead on a TV series.

“Up until this point, I had been manifesting,” she said. “I really wanted to be a lead. I wanted to get a promotion in my career journey. When Walker came, I was the lead female. That was my dream come true.”

Having served as a recurring character on The 100, Morgan only had one month off in between jobs before beginning work on Walker, and working consistently without a proper break eventually took its toll.

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“I was really blessed and lucky that I started working and didn’t stop,” she said. “But, looking back, I realized my mistake in the sense of, like an athlete, I was working, working, working, outputting, outputting, outputting, outputting, but I wasn’t recovering. All my dreams were coming true, and I was a mess. Me, personally, was not in a good place. My anxiety was through the roof.”

She continued: “I feel like I did not do good work. And looking back on it now, it was because I was so stressed out in my body — mentally and physically. I was a mess. I couldn’t figure out why. I have all of this responsibility on my shoulders, and I felt like I was failing everyone — and myself.”

Doctors gave her two options: Continue working 16-hour days for nine months at a time using a medication she may need for the rest of her life, or completely change her lifestyle to minimize stress on her body.

“I’m somebody that really pushes themselves and has really high standards, and I never want to let anyone around me down,” she explained. “I felt a little bit like I let Jared [Padalecki] down, or let the show down, and that was the hardest part for me, because it still makes me emotional, which I know is silly, because I was doing what I needed to do to take care of myself, and that’s more important.”

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