Cloud 9 is sadly saying goodbye to its boss. America Ferrera, who played the store manager Amy, announced she is leaving Superstore after season 5.
In a statement on The Hollywood Reporter, Ferrera said that she's ready to start the next chapter in her family and career. She said that working on Superstore in the last five years has been a "rewarding, enriching and enjoyable" experience.
On New Year's Day, Ferrera announced that she is pregnant with her second child with long-term husband Ryan Piers Williams. However, reps of the actress did not elaborate if this was the reason for her departure from the NBC comedy.
In 2018, Ferrera gave birth to her first child while working on the third season of Superstore. Her pregnancy was written in the story.
NBC bosses Lisa Katz and Tracey Pakosta said in a statement that the network was fortunate to work with Ferrera. They also said that actress also served as an ambassador for Superstore as one of its executive producers.
Superstore also stars Ben Feldman as Jonah, Amy's boyfriend, and co-worker. It's unclear how the show will write out Ferrera's character since NBC renewed the series for season 6 in mid-February.
The show averaged five million viewers a week in NCB's Thursday night time schedule during its first season. However, viewership dropped to two million in the later seasons, but NBC remained confident of the show's quality. Outside of the Neilsen's ratings, the network said that Superstore is one of its most-watched shows in the digital platform.
Justin Spitzer developed Superstore as an office comedy inspired by Walmart. Apart from Ferrera and Feldman, the series also stars Lauren Ash, Mark McKinney, Nico Santos, Nichole Bloom, Colton Dunn, Jon Barinholtz, and Kaliko Kauahi.
Meanwhile, Ferrera also has a Netflix series in circulation. Gentefied is a comedy-drama about a first-generation Mexican-American family in Los Angeles with Ferrera as the producer and director.
Ferrera was involved in the project from the get-go, with creators Marvin Lemus and Linda Yvette Chávez. According to Variety, the actress, who is a first-generation Honduran-American, fell in love with the script. She felt that the story represented their Latino culture in ways she has not seen.
Lemus and Chávez presented a short film version of Gentefied at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016. They decided to redevelop the story as a TV show and secured a Netflix deal. The first season dropped on the streaming platform this February.
