The *Real* Reason Daniel Lissing Left When Calls the Heart: ‘Circumstances Arose… ‘
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It’s been six years since Jack Thornton’s shocking death in When Calls the Heart left his wife, Elizabeth Thatcher, and millions of Hallmark fans heartbroken. But after all this time, the question still remains why Daniel Lissing left When Calls the Heart in the first place.
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Why did Daniel Lissing leave When Calls the Heart?
Lissing — who played Jack from Seasons 1 to 5 of When Calls the Heart — explained in Facebook live in 2018 that he left the Hallmark series due to unforeseen “personal” circumstances.
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“Circumstances arose for me where I needed to leave When Calls the Heart for reasons that are very personal to me,” Lissing said. “I went to Hallmark and they were nothing but supportive of me. I went to the girls and they were nothing but supportive of me.”
He continued, “It’s been the honor of my career to play Jack. It has been the honor of my career to work with these two amazing women who I consider some of my best friends in the world. When I came out to the United States, as a guy who was playing [music] in bars in Sydney, to think that I would play a character like Jack on an American TV show is beyond anything I could’ve ever imagined.”
Lissing also denied fan speculation at the time that he left due to behind-the-scenes drama, maintaining that his experience on When Calls the Heart was a “very positive one.” Lori Loughlin, who played Abigail Stanton from Season 1 to Season 6, also denied rumors of drama between the cast, telling Facebook live viewers that the she and her co-stars had “nothing but love for Dan.”
“First and foremost, I want to say to all of our fans that three of us here are very good friends, and we all love each other and we support each other,” Loughlin continued. “But we are actors, and actors have contracts and sometimes contracts expire and you have a choice to make. You either renegotiate or you don’t, and Dan has chosen to move on, we respect that. No judgment, we love him, we wish him well, he’s still part of the Hallmark family.”
Lissing also told Entertainment Tonight in 2020 that he didn’t regret leaving When Calls the Heart as, if he had stayed on the series, he wouldn’t have met his wife, Nadia, while on vacation in Reykjavik, Iceland, as he would’ve been in Canada filming.
“It’s funny the way the world works. If I had stayed on the show, and been there during season 6 and shot and all that kind of stuff, then I wouldn’t have met [my fiancee] Nadia, you know? And I wouldn’t be getting married and I wouldn’t be at this place in my life where I feel really in line with what I’m meant to be doing personally and professionally, so no regrets at all,” Lissing said. “How can I look at my future wife and say, ‘Oh, I should’ve stayed on this job?’ She’s my life, you know? That’s my personal life and that’s exponentially more important to me than a job.”
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What happened to Jack on When Calls the Heart?
Jack dies in Season 5’s finale, “Close to My Heart,” when he’s killed in a landslide while on a training mission in Fort Clay. Loughlin revealed during her, Krakow, and Lissing’s Facebook live in 2018 that When Calls the Heart considered several options to write off Jack after Lissing told Hallmark about his decision to leave the series.
“We talked about it and then we talked about it again,” Loughlin said. “We talked about, like, ‘Do we recast the role? No. We can’t recast the role, how can you recast the role? No!’ “The chemistry that these two have, we just didn’t feel like — the writers didn’t feel like that was possible.”
She revealed that another option was to send Jack to the Northern Territories of Canada, but that presented issues with his relationship with Elizabeth. “We knew our time was limited with Dan and the actor wouldn’t be coming back,” Loughlin said. So if we sent him off to the Northern Territories, now we have Elizabeth sitting at home in Hope Valley just pining away and waiting? Not much story to tell.”
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The writers also considered having Jack break up with Elizabeth due to his job as a Mountie forcing him to relocate, but the writers felt like the storyline was too out of character for Jack. “The only way he would leave her is in death,” Loughlin said. She continued, “That was a really hard decision for the writers to make. Truly it was. But I want the fans to know that we, in making that decision, we really did take you into consideration.”
When Calls the Heart is available to stream on Hallmark Plus.
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