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I often roll my eyes when people ask “Why doesn’t *insert character here* just come back?” Yeah…because former cast members must be just sitting around doing nothing with their lives after Degrassi. Major cast members that leave “before their time” (aka before their character graduates) sometimes leave on their own; they want to move onto the next phase of their life.
The Harvard Crimson recently interviewed Judy Jiao, who we all know played Leia Chang in Seasons 8 and 9…she only made a brief appearance in one episode in Season 10 (My Body Is A Cage). Her character would’ve wound up eventually graduating with the rest of the seniors at the end of Now Or Never, but Judy chose to attend Harvard instead. I love Degrassi, but I sure as heck wouldn’t hate on any actor for quitting this show to obtain an Ivy-league education, or any education for that matter.
Something from the written article jumped out at me as very interesting:
“At first, Jiao said she found it difficult to play Leia, who was meant to be dominant, gossipy, and a pathological liar. Jiao, on the other hand, came on set timid and inexperienced. Though she gained confidence in portraying Leia, Jiao said the writers made Leia’s insecure side more visible to better fit her personality.”
As wonderfully nice of a person as Judy is, her acting on the show was awful. It was immediately apparent, and it prevented her character from standing out in any way, even as the show tried to write Leia to accommodate Judy’s personality. It’s interesting to know that it was because she literally had ZERO experience and I take some solace in that. But at the same time one can only wonder the impact Leia could’ve made on the show had they decided to cast someone who could pull off the character’s original personality.
Don’t take my criticism of Judy’s acting skills as some sort of attack on her character…it’s not, because I thoroughly applaud her and the education-first path she has chosen to follow. You know, it’s kind of ironic…Degrassi is a show that takes place at an iconic school, yet we barely see anything education related anymore. Virtually gone are the days where students struggle with homework, or use the excuse “I can’t go, I’ve gotta do homework tonight” on a Friday night (a DJH reference for you old-school Degrassi viewers). We don’t see every single character simultaneously freaking out over exams, because everyone feels like they’re on the brink of failing every class. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Degrassi has shifted from being an educational show to being an entertainment show. But here we have Judy Jiao, someone who is literally and metaphorically bypassing drama to achieve her goals. Judy wasn’t even close to being one of the most popular cast members on the show, but what she’s doing is something I give her endless respect for and is a true lesson fans could learn from…if of course they can stop the trivial fangirling long enough to notice.
Kary's Degrassi Blog 
Can’t hate on someone who puts her education first. An education will open the doors for quality opportunities after it is completed, good look Judy.
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It’s interesting that you joke about former cast members doing nothing with their lives post-Degrassi. With the exception of Drake and maybe Daniel Clark, many of them haven’t done much substantial after they left the show, acting-wise or education-wise.
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Shanae Grimes (Darcy) is on The CW’s 90210.
Nia Dobreve (Mia) is on The CW’s Vampire Diaries
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I meant actors from Seasons 1 and 2.
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I really wanted to like liea, i never hated her. I just felt that the writers made her (along with chantay) throw-away characters. but one thing that does upset me is that the degrassi staff hire people with NO experience..WHAT IS THAT? so they literally had no standards when it came to casting for her character. just a pretty face i guess.
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Just curious, What college did you go to Kary?
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I went to Appalachian State University
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Kary, thanks for posting this. Please post more things like this in the future if you have the chance. …….I wondered if Judy had been fired. Linda Schuyler once said she didnt mind actors making mistakes, in fact thats how they learn. However she said she didnt like actors making the same mistakes over and over and that was hard to tolerate. Judys character seemed one dimensional. Than barely background. I wondered if that was poor writing or the show felt she wasnt up to handling a major story line. The exact opposite would be Annie Clark. (Fiona) She started out bland and one dimensional but she stepped up and succeeded with everything they gave her to do.
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I’m sorry, but that video had some horrible production values. These people are from Harvard, right? You would think they’d do a better job with the sound (Judy sounded as if she was 40 feet away from the camera) and the voice-over reporter did not sound fluid in her delivery at all. I realize this is merely a college production, but I can see they have the proper equipment equipment to work with, so they should have done a better job at this. My college soap opera (filmed in 1998!!!!!) had better production values than this piece.
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I liked Judy Jiao’s character and as for experience, she would have needed to get more involvement in the story to get better, she only had one or two notable roles and like what…one storyline dedicated to her at most?
Degrassi has a bad habit of making throw away characters, Judy Jiao is not the exception to the rule. They did it with Blue, Chantay, Zane( and yes I’m counting Zane, they added him to the main cast for him to rarely show up and when he did show up, he was basically support for Riley with none of his personal issues discussed).They’ve done it with other characters in the past too like Kendra.
If anything they need to give every character a defined purpose and keep everyone relevant, everyone doesn’t need to be a star, but everyone should get main storylines sometimes and grow as characters.
Onto the interview, I liked it and am glad she was smart enough to get into Harvard and is pursuing a career outside of the media, congratulations to her on her amazing achievement, good luck Judy, I always liked your character and wish she had been given more relevance.
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