The Real Reason Lauren Lee Smith Left CSI

Sometimes, an actor can be great, and the character can be just fine — but for one reason or another, they just don't really fit in the jigsaw puzzle. As "CSI" producer Naren Shankar told TV Guide Magazine (via TV Fanatic) in 2009, such was the case with Lauren Lee Smith's Riley Adams, who simply happened to enter the show at a time when the CSI cast was already going through a massive shake-up.

""It was an issue of how we were feeling the ensemble was working," Shankar said. "When we brought in the character of Riley, it got lost in the shuffle a little bit because we had lost Warrick, we had lost Sara [Sidle, as portrayed by Jorja Fox], and then in the middle of last season Grissom [William Petersen] finally left. I think, as a result, the character never quite found its footing in terms of the rest of the gang."

It's a shame that fans didn't have more time to get acquainted with Riley, but as a silver lining, Fox's fan-favorite character, Sara Sidle, ended up returning for Season 10 in her stead.