The I Know What You Did Last Summer star booked a recurring role on the crime procedural show months after her TV series The Client List ended after two seasons - and the show's writers even gave her character a pregnancy storyline to accommodate the fact the actress is expecting her second baby.

In the season finale of the show, which aired in America on Wednesday (06May15), the pregnancy storyline was used to write Hewitt's character out of the series.

Showrunner Erica Messer tells Entertainment Weekly, "I didn't know she was pregnant until really the end of the calendar year, which was still early, although we had already broken the finale at that point. There was definitely some going back and having more finality to her character... but what wasn't in play was writing her out by any means. We went back into the writers' room and discussed options of how to do that."

She adds, "Jennifer wanted to be able to give this second baby everything she gave her first, and that's taking time off to be a full-time mom. Because she's due in July, when we would start shooting season 11, timing-wise there was no way for her to do both - to be able to give that baby everything she wanted to give that baby and still be on our show. We wrote to that, and that's how season 10 ends..."

But Messer insists she is "leaving the door open" for Hewitt to return, adding, "One of the great things about our show is you can leave those doors open. We rarely kill anyone. That opportunity for paths to cross again is definitely open. Everybody is on board with that."