The Gaffney Chicago Medical Center is losing one of its best and brightest.
Marlyne Barrett is officially stepping away from her role on Chicago Med as ER nurse Maggie Lockwood after 10 seasons. Entertainment Weekly can confirm that Barrett is departing the series for personal reasons before season 11 premieres in October. Though that means the NBC medical procedural is losing one of its star players, the hope is that Barrett’s leave will be a temporary one.
EW did not immediately hear back from a representative for Barrett.
Arnold Jerocki/WireImage
While the reasons for Barrett’s decision to step back have not yet been disclosed, the actress revealed in 2022 that she was diagnosed with breast cancer, just three years after her Chicago Med character fought her own battle against breast cancer.
“I’m an extremely private person, but I felt a responsibility to tell my story,” Barrett shared at the time. “When my character went through breast cancer, I had a sea of people reach out to me through social media. They brought me courage, and so I felt a sense of inevitability to meet their hearts where they met me.”
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Barrett has played the hardscrabble, fiercely devoted emergency room charge nurse since the show’s first season, which premiered in 2015. Chicago Med is the third installment in Law & Order creator Dick Wolf’s sprawling “Chicago” franchise, which also includes Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and the short-lived Chicago Justice, which aired a single season in 2017.
George Burns Jr/NBC
With Barrett on the way out (for now), only two stars from the series’ original cast — S. Epatha Merkerson and Oliver Platt — remain. Merkerson, who plays powerful administrator Sharon Goodwin, and Platt, who plays the Chief of Psychiatry, Dr. Daniel Charles, are both set to return for the series’ upcoming eleventh season.
Though Barrett’s absence will be felt, the ever-revolving door of the Dick Wolf TV universe is also welcoming a previous Chicago Med star back to the show. Nick Gehlfuss, who starred as Dr. Will Halstead in the show’s first eight seasons, has signed on for a season 11 guest role. Halstead previously left Chicago for Grey’s Anatomy country — Seattle — in pursuit of Torrey DeVitto’s Dr. Natalie Manning, whom he married.
Chicago Med season 11 premieres Oct. 1 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC and Peacock.
