'Degrassi' Star Katie Lai Reveals the Reason She Quit the Show After 2 Seasons
Updated on April 23, 2025
Katie Lai is getting candid about her days on Degrassi: The Next Generation.
Fans of the long-running Canadian teen drama remember Lai as Kendra Mason, the adoptive sister of Gavin "Spinner" Mason, played by Shane Warren Kippel.
More than two decades after exiting the show after starring on it for two seasons from 2002-2004, per IMDb, Lai, 35, opened up about her departure during an appearance on The Degrassi Kid Podcast.
"The reason I gave is that I was under contract but not getting a lot of screen time," said Lai.
The actress said she approached Degrassi co-creator and producer Linda Schuyler and said she "would like to be released because due to the contract I'm on hold, which means I can't audition for other things, and I want to kind of explore more roles."
"I want to do more in theater and I can't if I'm tied down by this contract," Lai recalled saying at the time.
However, Lai claimed on the podcast that the "actual reason" she left the show was "because I was bullied so badly I wanted to throw up every time I had to go to set."
"I loved acting so much, but the bullying was to the extent that I did not want to get up and do my favorite thing in the world because I couldn't handle arriving on set and having it all start again," she said.
Lai said she didn't want to tell any of the producers "the real reason" she was exiting the show, "because I didn't want any of the cast members to be called up on anything."
"I didn't want it to get out into the media that this was happening, I didn't want to have to sit through he said, she said," Lai said. "I didn't want to have to come up with proof or evidence. I just wanted it all to stop."
While Lai didn't give any specific details about the alleged on-set bullying, she claimed that "it wasn't everybody" who was doing the bullying, but it was something that was happening "all the time." She said she believed the only way to get it to stop was to "walk away."
"And sadly that was also essentially the end of my career because you know I never worked in this town again. I couldn't handle going through what I knew would have been a difficult investigation and any kind of allegations or rumors that would come out of it," she said.