After seven seasons, Masi Oka will exit Hawaii Five-0 as a series regular, EW has learned exclusively.
Oka joined the series in season 1 as Dr. Max Bergman, the Chief Medical Examiner who has assisted Five-0 in solving crimes since the fifth episode of the series — first as a recurring character, and then as a series regular starting in season 2.
After taking a brief sabbatical to work with Doctors Without Borders at the end of season 6, Max returned for the annual Halloween episode, but will leave in the upcoming 13th episode of the season, moving to Africa with new bride Sabrina (Rumer Willis). Below, the Heroes alum details his decision to leave the long-running CBS procedural and what’s in store for Max’s send-off:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What came with the decision to leave the show?
MASI OKA: I just thought the character went through a major journey. He got married, now he’s going off to Africa, so I think character-wise I felt like Max had done too much of everything he can do. And we’ve been so blessed to work for seven years on a great show, but a lot of my business has been in Los Angeles and Japan and it’s been increasingly difficult to really commute to Hawaii. I’m probably the only one who really commutes to Hawaii, maybe 18 times a year round trip. It got to the point where the producers were very gracious enough to — like we talked about it and we thought Max was entering his journey and they allowed me, kind of like for my health as well, to be able to take a reprieve from being on the show.
So what where your conversations like with executive producer Pete Lenkov about exiting? Anything particular you wanted for Max before you left?
No, I just wanted to give him a nice send-off, and if it helps the ratings, please feel free to kill him off. Do whatever works for Peter and his great writers to come up for a good ending for Max that would also help the show, because I want the show to go on as long as possible. So it was actually a very simple conversation, they were like, “Great, we’ll come up with something.” It was really smooth.
Oka joined the series in season 1 as Dr. Max Bergman, the Chief Medical Examiner who has assisted Five-0 in solving crimes since the fifth episode of the series — first as a recurring character, and then as a series regular starting in season 2.
After taking a brief sabbatical to work with Doctors Without Borders at the end of season 6, Max returned for the annual Halloween episode, but will leave in the upcoming 13th episode of the season, moving to Africa with new bride Sabrina (Rumer Willis). Below, the Heroes alum details his decision to leave the long-running CBS procedural and what’s in store for Max’s send-off:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What came with the decision to leave the show?
MASI OKA: I just thought the character went through a major journey. He got married, now he’s going off to Africa, so I think character-wise I felt like Max had done too much of everything he can do. And we’ve been so blessed to work for seven years on a great show, but a lot of my business has been in Los Angeles and Japan and it’s been increasingly difficult to really commute to Hawaii. I’m probably the only one who really commutes to Hawaii, maybe 18 times a year round trip. It got to the point where the producers were very gracious enough to — like we talked about it and we thought Max was entering his journey and they allowed me, kind of like for my health as well, to be able to take a reprieve from being on the show.
So what where your conversations like with executive producer Pete Lenkov about exiting? Anything particular you wanted for Max before you left?
No, I just wanted to give him a nice send-off, and if it helps the ratings, please feel free to kill him off. Do whatever works for Peter and his great writers to come up for a good ending for Max that would also help the show, because I want the show to go on as long as possible. So it was actually a very simple conversation, they were like, “Great, we’ll come up with something.” It was really smooth.
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