Kevin Can Wait

Why Kevin Can Wait Really Killed Off Kevin’s Wife

“We were literally just running out of ideas,” says Kevin James.
Kevin James in Kevin Can Wait.
Courtesy of Jeffrey Neira/CBS.

For those who are still pondering the strangest question of the fall TV season—why Kevin Can Wait unceremoniously killed off Kevin’s wife, Donna, played by Erinn Hayes—it appears we’ve finally got an answer: Donna died because after a single season, the CBS sitcom was, according to star Kevin James, “literally just running out of ideas.”

“I get that people are like ‘Whoa, why would you do this?’“ James told the New York Daily News over the weekend. “But it really felt like a thing like this was needed for this show to drive forward . . . Now, I have to deal with my daughter in a different way, and she’s gonna go to college, or one’s getting married, or the holidays. And it deals with things in a different, weightier way.”

At least, theoretically it does. The series premiere mentioned the death of Donna only in passing; James told the Daily News that the show may or may not grapple with her loss further, since it’s still a lighthearted sitcom at its core. Since confirming the news that she had been booted off the show, Hayes has remained relatively quiet on the subject of her character’s death, save for cheekily liking a few tweets from users mourning the loss of Donna.

Originally, James said his character on Kevin was supposed to be a single father. After Season 1, James and the show-runners decided to go back to their original plan, believing that the show needed a change to ensure its longevity. Hence Donna getting the ax. “The plot of the show didn’t have enough drive,” James said. “If we got through a second season, I wouldn’t see us getting through a third one. We were literally just running out of ideas.”

And so, out stepped Hayes . . . and in came Leah Remini, whose guest turn during the Season 1 finale had been well received. Remini is now a series regular on Kevin Can Wait, and per the Daily News, neither she nor James is ruling out the possibility that their characters might end up in a romantic relationship, perhaps even reprising their turn as husband and wife in their long-running CBS sitcom King of Queens. As Remini put it to the Daily News, “You have to at some point. It’s not a ‘no,’ it’s just there’s so many episodes to do before that.”