Pooch Hall set the record straight about his departure from The Game
When the star of a series departs, there are always rumors about why they left. You hear, "They probably wanted too much money," or "There must've been issues with their castmates on set." However, we, as viewers, won't know the truth until it comes from the actual source: the actor who left.
Pooch Hall and Tia Mowry left The Game a bit after BET revived it and made it a drama. Hall played Derwin Davis, a rookie wide receiver (when it first aired), navigating his new life in the league with his girlfriend Melanie Barnett (Mowry), who was studying to be a doctor. The series caught everyone's attention when it first aired (while it was a sitcom) and became popular.
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It's a spinoff of Girlfriends, but other than the pilot episode, which reveals Melanie as Joan's cousin, the two shows stayed separate. Davis was Halls' breakout role, and he held it close to his heart. He would've loved to continue being Derwin, but things just didn't work out that way.
"For the record, I didn't get fired. I didn't walk away," Hall told The Tom Joyner Morning Show, according to Hello Beautiful. "My contract came up, I promise you. We were negotiating, and we just couldn't come up with a number. So my team said we're going to send you out [on auditions]... I never quit, and this is what I want people to understand.
"When The Game first got cancelled I got another job on Accidentally on Purpose. I made a deal and when Accidentally on Purpose got cancelled, I had two years where I could work over there. I believe everyone else got three. We were trying to work on the numbers and we couldn't agree and my team said we're sending him out and I literally booked Ray Donovan a week [later]."
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