After two seasons spent rivaling and romancing The Morning Show’s two lead characters, Julianna Margulies is departing the series. According to Variety, the Emmy winner was offered a one-episode appearance in the upcoming fourth season, which she declined, though their sources also say that Margulies has been asked about interest in returning for a potential season five. Vanity Fair has reached out to reps for the series and Margulies for comment.

Season two of the Apple TV+ drama introduced Margulies as veteran news anchor Laura Peterson, who becomes a professional rival to Jennifer Aniston’s Alex Levy and love interest to Reese Witherspoon’s Bradley Jackson. Although Laura and Bradley broke up early in the show’s third season, by the time of the season three finale, Alex had proposed a cost-cutting merger between UBA and MBN, the network anchored by Margulies’s character—ostensibly creating a storyline that would’ve put Laura toward the center of the action.

According to Variety’s sources, Margulies’s exit was planned before controversy surrounding remarks she made on a podcast last year. The actor apologized after saying that lesbians who did not stand with Jews offended her as someone “who plays a lesbian on The Morning Show,” and that Black people who did not stand with Jews after the Hamas attacks had been “brainwashed to hate Jews.” Margulies said in a statement that she “did not intend for my words to sow further division, for which I am sincerely apologetic.”

News of Margulies’s leave comes a week after it was reported that Oscar winner Marion Cotillard has joined the ensemble cast, which includes Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Karen Pittman, Greta Lee, Néstor Carbonell, Jon Hamm, and Nicole Beharie.

Back in 2021, after her first season with the show, Margulies told Vanity Fair, “I’ve gotten some really interesting offers since The Good Wife, and I’ve grappled with, Could I ever do a network show again? The answer I finally come to, especially after doing The Morning Show, is no. I feel like I put my time in.” She concluded, “I think you can do 10 great episodes of a show. I don’t think you can do 23 great episodes of a show…. I never want to be in that position again.”