Barrington, who also starred in Celebrity Treasure Island this year, told the hosts that as the Shortland Street production team wrapped up shooting last year\u2019s season, they had made the decision while planning the show for 2026. <\/p>\n
His departure from the show was preceded by a dramatic storyline that culminated in a bittersweet exit of his character from Ferndale.<\/p>\n
McCaskill struggled to move on from the death of his wife, Harper (played by Ria Vandervis), who was killed in a 2024 storyline. <\/p>\n
He then followed friend Dr Boyd Rolleston to Amsterdam to pursue a new business venture.<\/p>\n
Barrington described leaving the show as \u201ca bit like a corporate restructure\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just go, \u2018how\u2019s our product gonna look like next year\u2019, and \u2018we\u2019re not going to have these people involved\u2019 and move things around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Podcast host Papas suggested the process was \u201cpretty ruthless\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cRuthless is one way to put it,\u201d Barrington replied, revealing that there was a \u201clittle bit of back and forth-ing\u201d leading up to his final episode.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ended up going back a few months later and doing an exit. They went, \u2018we actually can\u2019t have your character just disappear in a puff of smoke\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben Barrington as Drew McCaskill in Shortland Street, after being shot in a dramatic cliffhanger.<\/p>\n
In April, Barrington told Women\u2019s Day that producers told him they felt like he had \u201cdone his dash\u201d, to which Barrington replied he was ready for something else and was burnt out from his time on the show.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had work every day for 10 years, which is fortunate in our industry, and I\u2019ve got nothing but fond memories, but it was time for me to move on. <\/p>\n
\u201cFortunately, [production company] SPP was really good to me and has put me in their other shows as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked by Papas if he had \u201cpost-show blues\u201d, Barrington said: \u201ca little bit\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a disruption in my life because I loved going in there to work and working in a creative environment, and had really good friends there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben Barrington in Celebrity Treasure Island.<\/p>\n
South Pacific Pictures, which produces Shortland Street, did not comment on the statements made by Barrington.<\/p>\n
Barrington graduated from Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School in 2001 and has starred in hit Kiwi shows such as The Almighty Johnsons, Outrageous Fortune, and Dancing with the Stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barrington, who also starred in Celebrity Treasure Island this year, told the hosts that as the Shortland Street…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[3376,74,63584,15361,430,14134,156,194,12514,2845,4977,11692,111,139,69,10903,12860,312,5411,9524,5424,18324,1530],"class_list":["post-507199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-actor","tag-after","tag-barrington","tag-ben","tag-celebrities","tag-decision","tag-entertainment","tag-kiwi","tag-leave","tag-leaving","tag-my","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-popular","tag-revealed","tag-says","tag-shortland","tag-soap","tag-street","tag-wasnt","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}