Devon Sawa Once Shared He Couldn’t Stay on ‘NCIS: LA’ Because He Was Out of His Element
NCIS Los Angeles has welcomed several famous recurring guest stars and characters, and Devon Sawa could’ve been one of them. The Final Destination star had a very brief stint in the series before he moved on to other projects. Back then, Sawa just felt that NCIS LA, and the world of television in general, was too much for him.
Devon Sawa once shared what it was like switching from movies to television
Sawa was already a veteran actor by the time he made the transition to television. However, doing TV shows was still uncharted territory for him since he spent a good chunk of his career doing films. His breakthrough role was 1995’s Casper, which he credits Christina Ricci for helping him star in. And although he wasn’t in the feature for very long, it quickly became one of Sawa’s most memorable performances. Sawa starred in many other movies afterward, with perhaps his most notable being the 2000 horror flick Final Destination. But in his 20s, Sawa decided to take a long hiatus from the film industry despite his successful career.
“I had been going pretty hard from the age of eleven until about the age of twenty-five. And at the age of twenty-five, I felt a little burnt out, and I didn’t know whether I wanted to act anymore. I wasn’t doing the things that I wanted to do, and I stepped away,” Sawa once told Tell-Tale TV.
Ironically, however, stepping away from acting only reinvigorated his passion for the craft.
“It was kind of by accident that I got back into it. I got sent a script via snail mail and decided I’d put myself on tape for it. And all of the sudden, a week later, I was back meeting with managers and realized that this is what I want to do and that I just needed that break. I just needed that five years to figure out that this is what I really love,” he said.
But when he returned to acting, he discovered that a lot changed over five years. Television shows had become much more popular, and many of them offered the same quality of storytelling audiences could find on the big screen. Since Sawa used to be primarily a film actor, starring in TV shows took some getting used to. So much so his role in NCIS Los Angeles was cut short because of his inexperience on the platform. He played Detective Matt Bernhart in the episode “The Bank Job” before leaving the show.
“It was all a huge learning experience, and I had to learn really quickly. I did NCIS: LA. It was a part that was supposed to go further, and it didn’t just because [when] I got to set, I was out of my element,” he said.
‘Nikita’ helped Devon Sawa adjust to television
NCIS: LA didn’t work out for Sawa, but he eventually found his groove in the world of television thanks to Nikita. He was a recurring character in the show’s first two seasons before being promoted to series regular. Since then, Sawa has become an even more experienced and accomplished television actor. Perhaps some of his most popular TV shows since then were 2017’s Somewhere Between and the Chucky series. Unlike in NCIS, where Sawa’s role was cut short, Sawa actually saw his role expand in the killer doll series. It was a testament to how far he’d come as a television star, which all started with Nikita.
“Once I got to Nikita, I kind of figured out, ‘Okay, you’ve got to be on the ball. You gotta keep moving. You have be prepared.’ And then the rest is history,” he said.
“It took a little bit of grinding before, bless their hearts, the Nikita people opened the door, and said, you know, we’ll take a shot at him. And now I’ve been working steady since and on stuff that I want to do. It’s been amazing,” Sawa added.
