Main character Jennifer Jareau or JJ, played by actress AJ Cook, will have to be conspicuously absent on several episodes of the upcoming Season 11 of the American police-procedural TV series “Criminal Minds” before she comes back again for the remainder of the season.
According to Erica Messer, executive producer of “Criminal Minds,” the writers are now working on several plotlines so that they can write around Cook’s absence using the series finale of Season 10 as groundwork, cites the Vine Report.
But unlike AJ Cook, Jennifer Love Hewitt will totally skip Season 11 of the TV series as she got pregnant after the Season 10 ended. AJ, on the other hand, got pregnant around the time when the show was its penultimate part so she can actually come back and join the filming on some of the latter episodes.
JJ was able to announce to the team under the Behavioural Analysis Unit (BAU) during the series finale for Season 10 that she will be going on a maternity leave.
Hewitt joined the TV series only in Season 10 as former FBI agent Kate Callahan. The actress is best remembered for her role in the horror-suspense series “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character in the series is an important and integral part of the show so the showrunners really need to be creative in allowing her to skip a full season without killing off her character.
Hewitt would likely skip the entire year and just come back for Season 12, quite confident that “Criminal Minds” will extend beyond its 11th season.
Welcome return
Unlike most TV series of its genre, the people behind “Criminal Minds” does not like killing off characters.
Erica Messer said that the production team likes people to come back and play whenever they can so they don’t just kill them off.
In order not to highlight too much the absence of Jennifer and AJ in the upcoming Season 11 of “Criminal Minds,” the production team will bring back familiar faces from previous seasons to keep up with its ‘revolving door’ system of bringing in and out new agents that are normally played by guest stars.
She also added that the team is also happy for both AJ and Jennifer, although they were caught by surprise in the latter’s pregnancy but in a good way. She said that none of them really thought at the beginning of Season 10 that there would be two pregnant cast members at the end. While it is too soon to talk about Season 12, they will definitely be bringing back Jennifer Love Hewitt if the show is renewed for its 12th season in 2017.